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By Cynthia Stockley 

Poppy 
The Claw 
Blue Aloes 
Wild Honey 
Wanderfoot 
Ponjola 

The Garden of Peril 


The Garden of Peril 















{ 

The Garden of Peril 

A Story of the African Veld 


Cynthia Stockley^ 

Author of “ Poppy,” ** Ponjola,” etc. 


G.P.Putnam’s Sons 

l^wYork & London 

©je Knickerbocker J3re** 

1924 



Copyright, 1924 
by 

Cynthia Stockley 


©C1A766810 ' ' 



Made in the United States of America 

JAN 21 *24 < 


'hr V 



The Garden of Peril 


PART I 


The Garden of Peril 


PART I 

Though Peril Kelly had been born a child of 
Rhodesia, there was more of the fine Italian than 
of the frank colonial in her composition. Her 
father, a scapegrace Mounted Policeman, dead 
sooner than strictly necessary because his malaria- 
overladen veins could not last the pace, left her no 
inheritance of Celtic rashness; nor, it seemed, had 
Perilla Kelly, that lovely Italian creature, dead 
too of the pace, bequeathed to her only child the tor¬ 
ment of hei^ noontide temperament. Passing strange 
that the Sole issue of that tempestuous union 
should be calm and tranquil as a gardenia opening 
in the moonlight! 

The garden, in fact, seemed to be Peril’s most 
natural setting, and there she was chiefly found, 
though sometimes she worked with her uncle in hi* 
3 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


laboratory, spending long fascinating hours over 
glass tubes and Bunsen burners, sorting, classify¬ 
ing, and testing the herbal plants for which he had 
a passion. Dr. Kelly’s homoeopathic potions were 
almost as renowned as his sound knowledge of 
modern surgery; but the one was his business, the 
other only his hobby. 

Bruce Kelly had been a widower for many years, 
and his brother’s orphan girl composed his entire 
family, except for Valpy, a capable St. Helena 
woman who ran the household on oiled wheels. So 
that few people in Rhodesia enjoyed a smoother 
existence than he and Peril in the house known as 
The Hill, above the township of Umtete. 

The Doctor had planned and planted his garden 
much about the same time as his niece was being 
planned and planted to fulfil her destiny in it, that 
is to say, some twenty years before, and his fore¬ 
sight was now repaid. For, if you take clumps of 
blackthorn, mimosa, teak, euphorbia, and other 
fantastically branched and flowering veld trees, pen 
them in with English roses, scented thymes, lark¬ 
spurs, hollyhocks, lavender bushes, and masses of 
mignonette, above a world’s view of rolling kopje- 
4 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


country and an horizon of Mediterranean blue, you 
will have all the elements of enchantment at your 
daily disposal. The Doctor, however, being a busy 
man, had little time for more than brief tender 
glances at his paradise as he came and went. It 
was Peril who tasted its magic to the full. 

Her favourite spot was a rocky terrace, leaf- 
screened, and projecting from the hillside in some¬ 
thing of the fashion of a hanging garden upon the 
walls of ancient Babylon. Here at a rustic table 
she accomplished all the fine sewing of the house¬ 
hold, or swayed in a hammock, nursing her bush- 
baby—a strange little creature of the wilds, 
half-monkey and half-squirrel—or just sat in 
trance-like silence, elbows on table, gazing unseen at 
those who passed on the road within a few yards of 
her. Along that broad highway went most people of 
Umtete at some time or another, either in brazen 
sunlight, by the light of the moon, or in darkness 
lit only by the red glow from the Doctor’s lamp 
hung over the gate; and all unknown to them, be¬ 
hind the feathery veils of red pepper and jasmine, 
a girl mused upon these transient faces, studying 
their expressions of anger, amusement, sometimes 
5 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


of despair, with a pair of eyes golden and search¬ 
ing as an eagle’s. 

Steeped in the solitude of her garden and aloof 
from the world, she was by no means personally ac¬ 
quainted with all who passed. Indeed, she scarcely 
knew the names of half. Nevertheless, there were 
faces with which she had come to be almost as 
familiar as with her own, and whose faintest shades 
were clear reading to her as the printed word. 

“I who have never heard his name, perhaps I know 
him best of all,” she would sometimes misquote to 
herself, and then she was thinking of Punch Hesel- 
tine’s gay eyes set in sunburnt surroundings, and 
the careless smile he kept for all the world. But 
she knew of another face that Mounted Policeman 
wore when he rode alone—a face with the gaiety 
and the degage smile dropped from it and a dark 
melancholy set about the lips. 

He knew nothing of Peril, of course. Few people 
did. She had come back so quietly from her years 
of education abroad, and disappeared so unobtru¬ 
sively into the Doctor’s garden, that her advent was 
scarcely remarked. Modern Rhodesia has passed 
the stage when newcomers were heralded by the blare 
6 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


of a coachhorn, and everyone turned out to wel¬ 
come them. Nowadays every town has its daily 
trains from the coast, its private cars to meet ar¬ 
rivals, its shoals of tourists and transitory visitors. 
Life has widened out, and yet become more reserved. 
You are no longer obliged to dwell in the pocket of 
your neighbour, nor suffer him in yours. Neither 
need you share the secrets of your soul, and your 
commissariat, with your fellow-townsman because 
of the uselessness of trying to hide them from him. 
Rhodesia is still Rhodesia, of course, and existence 
there continues to maintain itself upon a peculiarly 
intimate plane: but it is not the Family Party of 
“the dear old early days.” Even, it is possible for 
an inhabitant to withdraw into the utter seclusion 
of a hermit’s life, if so oddly constituted as to pre¬ 
fer it. 

Wherefore Peril found nothing to prevent her 
from following the even tenor of her ways. No one 
broke in upon her delicious reveries and solitudes, 
or interfered with her pastime of studying known 
and unknown faces. And if perhaps her tastes in 
this seem unusual, let it be admitted at once that 
her education in Italian convents had been unusual, 
7 


% 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

and not inclusive of such accomplishments as 
tennis and dancing. These being the chief occupa¬ 
tions of the younger portion of Umtete’s popula¬ 
tion, it is understandable that socially she might 
have been a little out of the running; but as 
it happened, this was entirely to her taste. As for 
the Doctor, wrapped in his own pursuits,,it suited 
him very well that his niece should be the type of 
girl content with books and flowers and a secret 
world of her own. 

So Peril sat daily on her terrace, with Umtete 
slumbering in the sunshine below, the Police Camp 
perched upon another hill to the right, and away 
to the left that scattered picturesque suburb of 
bungalows known as the Marshways. 

This afternoon she had witnessed, as many times 
before, the passing of Punch Heseltine from Camp 
to Marshways, and half an hour later his return, 
with Mrs. Pam Heseltine, his cousin’s wife, riding 
beside him. 

Pam Heseltine was a sick man, and one never 
likely to get astride of a horse again; but his wife 
had an ideal seat, habited herself to perfection, and 
from behind a fantastic sort of yashmak made of 
3 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


mist-blue chiffon and worn to preserve her skin, she 
sparkled like a jewel. 

“Very well,” Punch Heseltine was saying, “after 
tea at the Camp I’ll take you on to M’Chunga’s. 
It’s one of my show kraals. Every nigger pays his 
tax regularly, never gets drunk, and never splits his 
brother’s skull. Everything at M’Chunga’s is lovely 
... on the surface at any rate.” 

“Only on the surface?” Doria Heseltine’s silver 
notes floated up and hung in the pepper branches. 

“Nothing is what it seems,” the man laughed 
ironically. “ ‘There are no fields of amaranth on 
this side of the grave.’ ” 

“What a pretty quotation!” flung Doria care¬ 
lessly, and they passed on. But the girl sitting in 
the garden produced from a memory never incon¬ 
stant to beautiful words, that which Punch Hesel¬ 
tine’s companion could not have known—the 
context of Landor’s exquisite phrase: 

• 

“There are no fields of amaranth on this side of 
the grave: there are no voices , 0 Rhodope , that are 
not soon mute , however tuneful: there is no name , 
with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, 
of which the echo is not faint at last." 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


She was still pondering this melancholy magic 
when the Doctor’s voice sounded from the garden. 

“Peril! . . . I’m going to the Marshways . . . 
coming too?” 

“Yes . . . coming, Uncle Bruce.” She pulled a 
shady hat down on to a head that shimmered sherry- 
brown in the sunshine, and parting the branches, 
sped after him with a movement rather like the flow 
of water, catching him up at the little gate they 
used for their private path to Minto Lodge. 

“I fancy Heseltine will be alone this afternoon,” 
said the Doctor, as she slid an arm through his. 
“And perhaps it will cheer him up if you stay and 
talk a bit, when I go on to the Hospital. What do 
you think?” 

“Of course. I am always so sorry for him. Oh, 
Uncle Bruce, do you think you’ll be able to help 
him ?” 

“It’s late in the day,” said the Doctor dryly. 
He was baldish, stoutish, reddish, with the vague 
manners of a profound thinker, and a pin-spot of 
piercing penetration in each grey eye. “He’s pay¬ 
ing the bill for the past, as we all have to do some 
time.” 


10 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


They were entering the Lodge gate when he added 
musingly : 

“But I’m trying a new injection on him. It may 
do some good. Make yourself scarce for ten min¬ 
utes, child.” 

Poor Pam Heseltine! Being one of those people 
who could not be kept in bed, they found him 
propped in his wheel-chair on the verandah, with 
Keable, his wife’s maid, sewing near at hand. 

He looked like some wild, hawkish bird that had 
been winged and chained to a post, and that he had 
done the winging himself did not make your pity 
any the less for that gaunt, shambling frame of 
bones and nerves, that dark, racked face. A 
neurasthenic wreck, drinking too much, for ke^ould 
no longer exist without drink, and getting no more 
than one hour’s sleep in the twenty-four without the 
help of drugs! Odd that with it all he had a look of 
courage, and the same gay eyes as his cousin Punch. 

“Ah! there you are, Doc.!” he croaked cheerily. 
“And brought my specialist with you, I see!” 

Peril smiled at that, and took his wasted hand. 

“I’ve come to sit with you for a little, when Uncle 
has gone—if I may?” 


11 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“Rather! I wish you’d come oftener! ... Get 
tea, please, Keable. . . . Sit down, everybody.” 

The Doctor seated himself and took out a surgi¬ 
cal case and two little bottles. Peril murmuring 
that she would help Keable get tea, followed the 
maid indoors. 

The Heseltines were among the few people in 
Umtete she knew well. That had come to pass be¬ 
cause the ship which brought her back to her native 
land had carried them also, in a last despairing 
search of health for Pam Heseltine. 

It was the despair, combined with the subtle look 
of courage, stamped upon the ravaged but still 
handsome features, that had drawn the shy girl out 
of herself and into a certain deck-usefulness to the 
sick man. And when they found they were bound 
for the same little spot on the map, it made a fur¬ 
ther cause for friendliness, Heseltine’s point of in¬ 
terest at Umtete being the presence there of his 
cousin, who was in command of the Mounted 
Police. 

“I want to see old Punch again, before I go west. 
Perhaps you know him, Miss Kelly? . . . ‘a bold 
bad man, and a desperado,’ as they sing at the Ec- 

12 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

centrics’, but good to look at and very companion¬ 
able.” 

No; Peril did not know him, having been away 
from Rhodesia since her childhood. She explained 
this to Pam, and also, gravely, that she had never 
met a bad man, at which he seemed grimly amused. 

Most things moved him to sardonic amusement, 
including his wife when she gently declined to be 
installed with him in the big state cabin, on the 
grounds that it would be neither wise of her to 
share a sick’s man’s atmosphere nor good for him 
if she should “crock up” and have to leave him to 
the care of hirelings. That made him laugh like 
the dickens. Nevertheless the element of bitterness 
was always absent from the laughter he directed 
at his wife. He seemed to think, with the rest of 
the world, that nothing unpleasant or inconvenient 
should touch that lovely personage. 

The ship’s doctor being entirely in accord with 
this opinion, accommodation for Mrs. Heseltine had 
been sought for and, in spite of a full ship, found 
elsewhere. That was how Peril had come to know 
Doria Heseltine so well. Too well. For it was 
Peril’s cabin that had been invaded, and Peril’s 
13 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


good-nature that had made invasion possible; yet, 
the arrangement once concluded, you’d have thought 
Peril herself to be the intruder, for no one could 
have been more unwelcome within the precincts of 
that sacred grove devoted to the cult of beauty. 

From the first, and without time lost in discussion, 
all the girl’s possessions had been gently but firmly 
pushed from drawer and peg to make room for 
Mrs. Heseltine’s. Then, every morning found her 
departure impatiently awaited, and every evening, 
whether she liked it or not, the cabin door was 
locked against her for a couple of hours. However, 
there were times of sea-stress, when even selfishness 
had not the power to oust the girl from her berth, 
and then indeed she had seen what she had seen, and 
heard what she had heard. 

It was a perfect revelation to the unworldly girl 
of a perfected worldly egotism. With youthful ex¬ 
travagance she had at first gone down in adoration 
before that softly curved and tinted face and sweet 
inquiring gaze of periwinkle blue; the lovely little 
yellow head, cropped and curled like a Florentine 
page’s; the gracefully luxuriante form always 
swathed in tender blues and greens that threw up 
14 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


her fairness dazzlingly. But adoration faded, 
changing into amazement that those childlike eyes 
could turn to stone, the delicious red lips form a 
thin scornful channel for cutting and contemptuous 
remark . . . and always for reasons that seemed 
to Peril utterly trivial: because, for instance, Keable 
had been late for the hour of massage, or given the 
goldy locks a twinge in curling, or left some pot 
of precious face-cream where unsympathetic eyes 
could spy it. 

Keable, it is true, bore these things with 
equanimity; though her patience might have been 
more admirable if not counteracted by a habit of 
gossip behind her mistress’s back. As it was, other 
maids and all the ship’s stewardesses knew of the 
“daily layer to be worked off” from Mrs. Hesel- 
tine’s exquisite figure, and of the little slices of raw 
steak dipped in hazel-extract laid nightly upon a 
delicate throat and cheek. 

“At her age they put on a fresh layer every day, 
and if it isn’t worked off every night, well . . . 
good-bye, beauty! You see, she will be M’lady some 
day, and she means to dazzle them when she is . . . 
to spring forth like a crocus out of the earth, all 
15 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


fresh and new.” Thus Keable, who was not with¬ 
out a certain gift of imagery. 

“She shouldn’t go to Africa if that’s her plan,” a 
stewardess succinctly retorted. Which expression 
of opinion, being duly separated from its context, 
was repeated to her mistress by Keable, never re¬ 
luctant to bring pain to those lovely eyes. 

“What did she mean?” breathed Doria fearfully. 
“The country’s civilised, isn’t it?” 

“Oh, yes, madame, in a way. But the heat is very 
shrivelling, I understand. And the water hard. No 
electricity in most of the Rhodesian private houses 
. . . they’re more like huts than houses, it seems 
. . . and I shan’t be able to give you your electric 
baths, nor use the massage machine.” 

“You’ll have to manage somehow.” The hard look 
came into Doria’s eyes, and Keable realised she was 
in for it. Not for nothing had Mrs. Heseltine paid 
heavy fees for her maid to take a course of Swedish 
massage. Keable’s fate would be to do an imita¬ 
tion of electricity. 

“And you’ll have to make me sort of yashmaks, 
of blue crepe de Chine , Keable, to wear out of doors. 
I won't have my skin ruined! Bring me my despatch 
16 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


case. I’ll write at once to ‘Melisande’ about water 
softeners, and for a larger supply of her Tropic- 
cream.” 

A lovely woman on the wane, who has never cared 
for any but material things, is in a sorry plight. 
It is pitiful to see her putting up a daily fight with 
Time, that implacable witch who pulls apart Na¬ 
ture’s fairest constructions, and treads relentlessly 
“the loveliest and the best” of us back into the dust 
from which we sprang. 

Thus it was with Doria Heseltine, eaten up by 
worldly ambition, and cherishing her beauty as the 
weapon wherewith to gain her ends. Time and the 
encroachment of flesh were her bitter enemies, but 
she fought them like a tiger. Idolising the exquisite 
shape of her body, she suffered torments at the 
pinching, pounding, pummelling hands of Keable, to 
keep it. For the worst of those luxuriante women is 
that they don’t know where to stop “putting it on,” 
as Keable expressed it. There comes a time when the 
fine line of demarcation between delicate sveltesse 
and a fatal corpulence may be overstepped, and the 
beauty wakes up one terrible morning to find her¬ 
self . . . stout! 


17 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Doria had long resolved that with her this thing 
should never be. It was absolutely essential to her 
type of beauty to stay young and slender. That 
Greuze-like gaze, that bobbed gold head, that silvery 
laugh, all appertained to a state of entrancing 
youth; on middle-age they would seem out of place, 
fantastic—almost they might be absurd. Where¬ 
fore, unceasingly she cried within herself: 

“I won't get heavy, I won't lose my beauty!” 
She was a fighter all right. Peril had never quite 
understood exactly what it was that she was fight¬ 
ing, and why? But some facts transpired that 
afternoon that made things a little clearer. 

After the Doctor had gone the girl poured out 
tea for Heseltine and could not help noticing how 
much brighter he seemed already for his treatment. 
Actually he began to talk about getting out a car 
from home ... a matter of several months . . . 
and as he didn’t usually look ahead for more than 
ten days at a time, this was rather remarkable. 

“I believe one can get a decent one out for some¬ 
thing under three hundred. And Doria would like 
it, too. She says she gets so sunburnt on horse¬ 
back.” 


18 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“She looks beautiful riding,” said Peril with 
natural generosity. “I saw them pass this after¬ 
noon.” 

“She can sit on a horse, can’t she? . . . and 
Punch has a couple of decent hacks—wouldn’t be 
a Heseltine if he hadn’t! But,” his voice grew 
warmer, “how I’d like her to have a chance at some 
of the Scawnshane horses. However . . .” 

“Scawnshane? Is that your home?” 

“Yes . . . the old place. Gad! if the Doctor can 
only keep me going long enough! It would be 
rough on her to just miss by a few months every¬ 
thing she hankers for . . . wouldn’t it?” 

Peril contemplated him with uncomprehending 
gaze. 

“How could she miss it?” 

“Well . . . I’m the heir, of course, but supposin’ 
I peg it before my cousin, old Lord Kenchester, the 
title and estates will go to my young brother Dick.” 

“I see.” 

“That’s all right, of course . . . Dick’s a fine 
youngster, and will carry on with far more credit 
than ever I could. But it’s a rotten situation for 
Doria. She . . . she cares so much for that sort 

19 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

of thing,” he sighed, adding quickly, “All women do, 
I expect.” 

There was a short silence, before he continued 
moodily: 

“The bettin’ against me is pretty steep, but the 
old man’s on his last legs too. He’d live for ever if 
he could, to keep Doria out, but we have it on the 
authority of the family doctor that it’s only a 
matter of months now, weeks even. So, if I can only 
hang on a bit”—his sombre gaze ranged across the 
open veld, glorious now with sunset hues—“long 
enough to let her be mistress of Scawnshane . . . 
even for a few months,” he muttered. 

To Peril it seemed terrible, this competition of 
two stricken men for length of days; but one thing 
was certain: this sick man at least had no selfish 
motive in his longing. A great pity surged in her. 

“Of course you are going to get better,” she said 
in a strong confident tone. “You don’t know how 
wonderful Uncle Bruce is. But you must make up 
your mind, too, and try for your own sake.” 

The expression of mocking weariness on his face 
was a melancholy thing to witness. 

“Fifty thousand a year’s not much good to me, 
20 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


personally. It can’t put back the clock and give 
me yesterday . . . nor retrieve the constitution I’ve 
ruined. Even if it could I should waste the lot, I 
expect, as I’ve done before.” 

He grinned cheerlessly. 

“Punch and I, when we came of age, each had 
eighty thousand pounds apiece! . . . And a few 
years later I had a larger windfall. And where is it 
all now? . . . ‘Gone into the Ewigkeit ,* as the 
Boche says. Punch is glad enough to get a Police¬ 
man’s job at six hundred a year, while I? . . . 
Well, as you see, I have to think twice about a 
couple of hundred pounds for a car to take the air 
in.” He laughed mirthlessly. “We can’t help it. 
It’s in the Heseltine blood to waste money, and play 
pitch-and-toss with health and happiness. We’re 
fatal men, Miss Kelly. Never have anything to do 
with us.” 

She smiled her serene and gentle smile at him, got 
out a pack of cards from the drawer of the tea-table, 
and began to shuffle them. A strangely fascinated 
look crept into Heseltine’s eyes as he watched her 
hands. He loved the very sight of a pack of 6ards. 
They meant life to him . . . men, women, money 
21 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


flowing through the fingers, wine in the bowl, the 
sands of life flying through the glass , . . but glit¬ 
tering, sparkling, scintillating, as they flew! He 
laughed again. 

“Punch can talk till all’s blue about the charm 
of the veld, but, like me, he’s always loved the lamp- 
posts. The Heseltine taste runs to the delights of 
civilisation . . . not to the dry bones and husks of 
the desert. Poor old Punch! It’s hard on him not 
having enough to keep his end up. . . . However, 
no Heseltine was ever a money maker.” 

“Why didn’t he have the same fortune as you?” 

“The Law of Property stepped in. My father 
was the eldest, his the youngest son . . . and a 
parson at that. Parsons never have a bean to 
leave. The eighty thousand Punch got through so 
heftily came from a great-aunt, and once that was 
gone he hadn’t a hope.” 

“But he has health and strength,” said the girl 
softly. 

Heseltine looked at her. 

“You’re right, that’s something! And a darned 
good-looking face thrown in. What do you 
say ?” 


22 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“I have not met your cousin.” 

“Ah! You must, though! He’ll be back with 
Doria, before long. It’s a blessing she’s taken to 
old Punch, or she’d have been bored stiff up here. 
The villain of the aeld as she calls him, though he 
keeps telling her ‘veld’ is pronounced with an ‘f,’ and 
that it’s his business to ‘run in’ villians, not be one. 
However”—he sighed—“I know why he’s taken so 
whole-heartedly to her” 

Peril did not ask why. She seemed lost in thought. 
But the sick man, obsessed by his subject, rambled 
on: 

“She means Europe to him ... all that he can’t 
have. Paris, Monte . . . Town, Ascot, hunting 
with the Pytchley, steeplechasing, ski-ing in Nor¬ 
way. We’re all great ski-ers in our family, I must 
tell you . . . my brother Dick is in the Engadine 
now, having the time of his young life.” 

“The excitement of sport must be wonderful,” 
said Peril slowly. “And I suppose it is true that 
in the war these were the men who fought like 
heroes ?” 

“They were all heroes . . . especially ‘Tommy,’ 
who gets precious little sport except a game of 
23 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


football on Saturday. But war is the greatest sport 
of all, and to a man like Punch it must have been 
meat and drink, even when he hated it most. I 
know he used to come back from France at the top 
of his form . . . and always with some fresh 
gadget . . . the M.C., or another bar to his D.S.O., 
or something or other from the French. Punch 
never yet went short on glory, I can tell you. It’s 
only Fortune that gives him the go-by. And now 
that Fame’s all over, back he sits in exile on the 
veld!” 

He laughed, looking away at the horizon with 
his miserable, derisive eyes. Scarlet and primrose 
splendour had faded now, but from the hills long, 
lavender-coloured shadows were stealing down, as¬ 
sembling like ghosts in the marshes, moving slowly 
on the town. 

“Shall we play a game of piquet?” suggested 
Peril gently, at last. 

“Yes . . . let’s.” His glance grew kinder, softer 
as it came back to her from the distance and rested 
on her with a man’s affection for a sweet child. 
“You’re a soothing kid, Peril!” This was a new 
departure, and he hastened to add with an impish 
24 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


smile, “Can I call you, Peril, please, because I’m 
going to die soon?” 

“Of course you can, but I shall tell Uncle Bruce 
if you say another word about dying . . . and a 
proposy I think we’d better go indoors now, because 
the mists are rising and he doesn’t like those mists 
for his patients.” 

So it was in the drawing-room that they settled 
to their game, and there, later, in the half-light the 
returning riders found them. Punch Heseltine en¬ 
tering from the verandah, behind Doria, got an un¬ 
forgettable picture of his cousin’s profile, brooding 
hawk-like over the cards—those gay emblems of 
pleasure that had bankrupted more Heseltines than 
one—and beyond, etched against the shadows, the 
delicate outline of a girl. His eyes still held the 
dazzle and allure of Doria Heseltine, the type of 
woman who meant to him all the things he couldn’t 
have, but that did not prevent his mind from re¬ 
ceiving an impression of something in the room, 
exquisitely composed of light and darkness, some¬ 
thing clear and pure . . . like white flowers in the 
cool gloom of water. 

“Don’t let us have the lights.” Doria’s voice rose 
25 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


plaintively from the deep sofa into which she had 
sunk. “I feel unspeakably dusty and dishevelled. 
But . . . Keable! Bring some drinks. You’d like 
a cocktail, I know, Punch?” 

“A sundowner would be grateful and refreshing.” 
He wandered over to the card-table. “How are 
you feeling now, old man?” 

The game was finished, and the girl had risen, 
crushing a big hat down on to the darkness of her 
hair. Pam Heseltine, with his sardonic chuckle, in¬ 
troduced them to each other. 

“My cousin the Policeman . . . Miss Kelly, my 
Nerve Specialist.” Punch heard a soft laugh, but 
the girl’s face remained seductively obscure under 
her wide hat. Then Keable came in with decanters 
and a cocktail-shaker on a silver tray, and the 
Policeman’s task was to “fix a drink” for every¬ 
body—everybody, that is to say, except the girl, 
who on being gaily rallied by Doria for not con¬ 
forming to the excellent custom of her country of 
thirst-quenching at sundown, was heard to say, in 
a young warm voice: 

“But water is so lovely when one is thirsty.” 

In the spontaneously derisive but good-natured 

26 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


laughter that broke from all three, the Doctor en¬ 
tered, and began to scold because his patient was 
still up instead of being comfortably tucked into 
bed. 

“I know, Doctor,” murmured Doria, sipping her 
cocktail indifferently. She did not really care about 
drinks, having far too much regard for her com¬ 
plexion. “But he is so naughty . . . never pays 
the slightest attention to what I say! I can do 
nothing with him, can I, Punch?” 

To everyone’s surprise Dr. Kelly startled them 
by raising his voice and saying roughly: 

“I must have a nurse in this house.” Adding 
abruptly: “That is, if you want your husband to 
get well, Mrs. Heseltine?” 

“If I want my husband to get well!” cried Doria 
in the silence. Her glass clashed on the table and 
she stood up to her tall length. “If I want . . .!” 
Heartbreak rang in her voice. “Oh! get a nurse! 
Get a nur&e, now, at once, to-night!” She burst out 
crying. 

There was instant hubbub, her husband, greatly 
distressed, muttering, “Doria, old girl—Doria!” 
Keable running in; the Doctor patting the weeping 
27 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


woman’s shoulder; Punch Heseltine trying to make 
her drink her cocktail. Eventually she retired with 
her maid, Punch took Pam off to bed, and the Doctor 
busied himself telephoning to the hospital for a 
nurse. In the general melee Peril disappeared with¬ 
out anyone’s noticing. Later in the evening, when 
they were parting at The Hill gate, Punch Heseltine 
remarked casually to the Doctor: 

“I hardly realised you had a daughter living here 
with you!” 

“She’s not my daughter.” Bruce Kelly had re¬ 
turned to his usual vague and dreamy manner. 
“She’s my pool of lilies.” 

A strange saying for Punch Heseltine to take back 
with him to the Camp, and ponder while he got into 
his mess kit. A pool of lilies! Yes, something like 
that he had thought of, when he came out of the hot 
dusts and mists of the African evening into the quiet 
drawing-room. Something white and fresh—and the 
cool, clear gloom of water! 

But he did not ponder the matter long, for he was 
already late for his engagement in the town, a “stag 
party” with poker to follow, that would proably last 
till dawn, and be far more to the point than cogitat- 
28 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


ing like a fool upon things that were not for him, 
and wouldn’t satisfy him if they were. Nothing sat¬ 
isfied him in this hell of a world, nor would in the 
next, he doubted, as he slung off his clothes in every 
direction and hurried into fresh ones, growling at 
the “boys” who stood about him with garments and 
gadgets in their assiduous hands, while outside 
sounded the creak of the saddle being put on a fresh 
horse. 

And as he cantered rapidly back through the 
darkness down the Umtete Road he deliberately 
pushed thoughts of women out of his mind. Or tried 
to. They were not for him. Men were his portion— 
and a damned good portion too! Happy nights of 
cards and good-fellowship, and no regrets after¬ 
wards ! If prospects and purse went to rack and 
ruin, all right, and no one’s business but his own. 
No reproaches from anyone, certainly not himself. 

“Leonidas poured out the wine 
And shouted ere he drained the cup, 

"Ho! Comrades, let us gaily dine. 

To-night with Plato we may sup!’ ” 

If that attitude of mind was good enough for him 
during four bloody years in France it ought to be 
29 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

good enough here in this dead-and-alive hole where 
there was little doing for a free lance bar the cards, 
the cup, and flirtation with other men’s wives. From 
the last felicity it was indeed his habit to refrain. 
Not exactly for want of temptation—in Rhodesia 
that would never be lacking—but because his taste 
in women happened to be fastidious and distinctive. 
They must be good-lookers of course . . . that went 
without saying, beauty being an essential in women. 
But he liked ’em to be either one thing or the other—- 
good or bad. He had no time for the half-sinner 
who strayed with her eyes and prayed with her lips, 
nor for those sprightlier ones who kept home un¬ 
sullied and husband unsuspecting whilst still con¬ 
triving to kindle hope in the philanderer’s breast by 
an occasional kiss and a bright promise for the mor¬ 
row. Not for him were such as these, in the shadowy 
ends of verandahs and the dark sitting-out corners 
of the ball-rooms. By no means because he was a 
Joseph trembling for the welfare of his coat, but 
merely and solely because he was so constituted that 
it took something rather wonderful, both in love and 
war, to make his pulses quicken by the hundredth 
part of a second, and he had, much to his regret, so 
30 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

far found no one in Rhodesia likely to perform this 
stimulating service for him. 

No one . . . that was to say . . . well, no one 
for whom his pulse could legitimately be permitted to 
bestir itself to unwonted activity. He wasn’t going 
to swear, of course, that Pam’s wife . . . 

This stage of his thoughts brought him to a part 
of the road where it divided, one way leading to 
Marshways, the other to the town. He gave a rest¬ 
less long look at the flickering lights of Minto Lodge 
before he turned his horse towards Umtete. 

No ... he wasn’t going to swear that, by Jove! 
He could not honestly lay his hand on his heart and 
swear . . . But then, she was Pam’s wife. If she 
hadn’t been ... if she hadn't been . . . why then 
. . . he’d have had her out of the saddle this after¬ 
noon and into his arms. He’d have drawn from her 
lips the meaning of that look she had given him more 
than once, and especially in the moment of saying: 

“There are men whom women recognise from the 
first ... as master. Men to make the greatest 
sacrifice for, with joy! Men to commit crime for, 
even.” 

What the devil did she mean by that?—and the 

31 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


look in those eyes turned on him? Corking, wonderful 
eyes. God! It was no use pretending his pulses 
didn’t stir in that moment. He had felt his own eyes 
darkening and throwing back the man’s answer into 
hers; his hand had reached out for her bridle. The 
horses stood still; her lovely lips took the shape of 
a kiss; they were alone on the empty veld ... a 
fitting place to take a woman into your arms and 
seal her to you with your mouth on hers! Yet no¬ 
thing had happened. He had remembered in time who 
she was . . . his cousin’s wife! Poor old Pam, tied 
by the leg, dying perhaps. Pam! more like a brother 
than a cousin, and a pal always. Yes ... he had 
remembered, and flinging himself off his horse, 
started tightening the girths or loosening them or 
something. By the time he’d finished and mounted 
again he was captain of his soul once more—such as 
it was—and so was she of hers apparently. They 
had ridden on. 

And after all she must have been fooling him! 
Trying him out, perhaps? Either that or he had 
misread her. Else what did that scene in the draw¬ 
ing-room mean? That reproachful bitter cry of 
hers at the Doctor: “If I want my husband to get 
32 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


better!” That at least was not fooling. No acting 
about that. A real cry from the heart, if ever he’d 
heard one. She loved Pam. 

Well, well! women were mysterious, unfathomable. 
No man could expect to know what they were up to, 
perhaps. What they meant? Yet ... he was not 
in the habit of making mistakes like that . . . not 
one of those fools who imagined every woman 
ready to tumble into his arms! No. There were 
certain signs and calls. Sophisticated men and 
women understood each other in these crises of the 
senses. Doria was not a child, any more than he 
was, to send out those unspoken messages from eyes 
and lips by accident! Yet, all the while she loved 
Pam! 

Well, quite right, too. Pam being her husband, it 
was meet and fitting so to do. And what he, Punch 
Heseltine, had got to do was to keep the fact 
well in the foreground, and furthermore to keep a 
tight rein on himself in future. For there was no 
doubt that Doria possessed a special lure for him. 
That kind of edition de luxe of woman always had 
and always would, especially when he came upon her 
in the wilderness. It was the fragrance, the atmos- 
33 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


phere, the je ne sals quoi of Europe that did it . . . 
that old Continent he never had the money to stay 
in long enough! For Europe without money was 
unthinkable. He could rough it anywhere in the 
wilds, the North Pole, or the Saharan desert. He 
didn’t mind working, fighting, struggling, starving 
even, at any old game in far lands. But Europe 
was his playground. 

No doubt if he ever had money enough he’d get 
sick of it, and pine to get back to the veld, but he’d 
like to have the chance of that, by god! Another 
fortune to blow in! But as that was the last thing 
in the world likely to happen, would he ever get rid 
of this burn in his blood for it . . . and for such 
women as Doria? 

That question still remained unanswered when nine 
hours later at the jade and amber point-of-day he 
was back on the Umtete Road. It had been a top- 
notch night; exciting play, excellent company, and 
his luck was in; they had drunk “till the gunpowder 
ran out of the heels of their boots” and the dawn 
stepped into the room shaming the lights. 

Yet, as he rode past The Hill, and looked up at the 
white walls of the house set there, silent, sleeping, 
34 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


among trees and green scented things, he was con¬ 
scious of a great emptiness in his life ... an aching 
nothingness. 

“A pool of lilies!” he muttered bitterly to him¬ 
self. 


One morning about a fortnight later, before the 
blaze of noon, Peril in her blue linen laboratory 
smock climbed to the heights of the garden and un¬ 
locked a walled-in enclosure which only she and the 
Doctor ever entered. He called it his garden of peril, 
and with good reason, for it held sufficient magic to 
cure every troubled mind and body in Rhodesia, by 
the simple process of transporting them to the 
Elysian Fields; though all that grew there was not 
poisonous by any means. As you walked down the 
thickly clustered paths, you brushed against rose¬ 
mary, fennel, valerian, myrtle, and rue; caught the 
clean healing smells of mint, camomile, and tansy; 
the aromatic sweetness of basil, balm, woodruff, 
“boy’s love,” marjoram, and bergamot. You could 
not step without sending up a perfect anthem of 
fragrance. 


35 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


The sinister plants stood apart, numbered like 
criminals, with little tin discs. Many of them had 
come from Malayan swamps, forests in Bolivia, 
jungles of the Congo and Ceylon. Strange, lus¬ 
trous-leaved things some; others sluggish-looking 
with blossoms that seemed to eye the quiet garden 
viciously. Some had an exquisite virgin air. Others 
held themselves royally, wearing their radiant fruit 
like jewels. Such was one of those Peril had 
come seeking—a proud graceful plant with glossy 
leaves, and berries like bright pendant rubies; 
the other resembled an old woman in a grey shawl 
and had white puffy berries that went off pop, if 
pressed. 

It seemed wonderful that Nature should arrange 
for two plants from different ends of the earth to 
ripen at the same time to be compounded together 
for the production of a valuable tonic drug . . . 
even as arsenic or strychnine have tonic value when 
taken in infinitesimal quantities. These two plants 
were among the Doctor’s most cherished possessions, 
and she was aware that an extract from them was 
being used in experimental injections on Pam Hesel- 
tine. All Bruce Kelly’s prescriptions were not found 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


in the British Pharmacopoeia by any means, though 
he had contributed certain distinguished additions 
to that classic work. 

Peril garnered her little harvest carefully, placing 
them in a small bowl. Only a few berries were ripe 
enough for the plucking, but one was over-ripe and 
squashed in her fingers, spreading over them a vivid 
magenta stain. As she made haste to wipe it off 
a gay voice exclaimed: 

“What a heavenly colour! I must have a tea- 
gown of it . . . give me a spot on my handker¬ 
chief.” Mrs. Heseltine, leaning on the little gate, 
put out a long white hand, but Peril drew back 
hastily. 

“You mustn’t touch it . . . it’s deadly poison.” 

“Poison! But how dreadfully fascinating!” 
Doria, swathed in a yashmak of aquamarine gauze, 
resembled a flawless pearl fished from the depths of 
the sea. 

“It’s like sloe-gin. I simply must have some.” 

“You can’t, though,” said Peril. “It’s one of 
Uncle Bruce’s most precious medicines, but he’s al¬ 
ways warning me how deadly it is if it gets into food 
or anything.” 


37 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

“Would it kill you at once?” asked Doria breath¬ 
lessly. 

“No, as a matter of fact, it is a slow poison.” 
She laughed. “I should fade away before his eyes 
if I took a few doses of it.” 

“And couldn’t he save you?” 

“Not if he didn’t know what I’d been up to,” 
laughed Peril again, and came out of the garden 
locking the gate and taking the key to hang on 
its nail in the surgery. She rather wondered as they 
sauntered down the path what Mrs. Heseltine 
wanted. It was unusual for that lady to brave the 
morning sun, even with a sun-umbrella like a young 
marquee. But Doria was still lost in thoughts of 
tea-gowns. 

“A sloe-gin tea-gown!” she murmured, “with a 
band of sable across the breast next one’s skin!” 
Then she sighed. “Pam is being extraordinarily 
obstreperous. He says he’s better and wants to go 
for a ride! Do you think he ought?” 

“For a ride!” exclaimed Peril. “Will you sit 
down under the trees while I put these things away, 
or go inside? I shan’t be a moment.” 

Doria elected the garden, and when Peril emerged, 
38 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


was already installed in a basket lounge, with Valpy 
laying the eleven o’clock tea on a little table at her 
elbow. 

“I mustn’t stay”—Doria settled herself more 
comfortably—“and I never drink tea in the morn¬ 
ing.” It was one of the unbreakable complexion 
laws, and not always an acceptable one either, for 
she looked longingly now at the dainty service, the 
crisp golden scones, and her tone was petulant. “I 
just want the Doctor to come and cope with Pam. 
You see he really is doing marvellously, and I simply 
can’t bear it if he goes and spoils everything, as he 
will if he rushes things. He’ll undo all the good 
those wonderful injections are doing.” She had lit 
a cigarette and leaned back, but a sudden ardour 
came to her, and made her sit up again with glinting 
eyes. “It seems almost past belief, that . . . per¬ 
haps ... if he will only go slow ... we may be 
starting for England again in a month or so!” 

Peril stared, surprised for a moment; and then 
she remembered what Pam had told her, and all that 
his health meant to Doria (apart, of course, from a 
wife’s natural solicitude!). 

“Still . . .” she murmured gently, almost to her- 
39 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


self, “you would not go too soon? . . . not before 
his cure is complete?” 

“Oh no; . . . but if he continues like this it will 
be complete, and, as things are, we might be called 
home at any moment . . . family reasons, you 
understand ?” 

Yes, Peril understood. It was unnecessary for 
Mrs. Heseltine to continue with a bored little air: 

“My husband is heir to a great name and estates, 
and the succession is pending ... we heard this 
morning that it is only a matter of weeks before we 
may have to give up our care-free life and take up 
all sorts of tiresome responsibilities.” She made a 
gesture of disdain. Peril said nothing, but she re¬ 
membered very vividly Pam Heseltine’s sardonic 
smile when he said: “Doria cares for these things 
... all women do, I suppose!” 

“So you see . . . the Doctor simply must come 
down at once and talk to Pam.” 

“But Uncle Bruce had to go into the country 
this morning . . . didn’t you get the message he 
sent down, that he wouldn’t be back till after 
five?” 

Doria looked aghast. 


40 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“What am I to do, then? Pam simply takes no 
notice of me ... or nurse.” 

“Could I do anything?” suggested Peril in her 
tranquil way. 

“Fom, my dear?” Doria smiled scoffingly. “I tell 
you no one can manage him except the Doctor.” 
She added thoughtfully: “Punch could, of course! 
. . . but how am I to get hold of him! Our tele¬ 
phone has broken down . . . and he has neglected 
us so lately.” 

Peril knew that. She had missed the beat of his 
horse’s feet on the road ever since one dawn, a fort¬ 
night ago, and had realised that he must be taking 
a certain short cut to Umtete. 

“You could telephone from here,” she said 
slowly. 

“Of course ... I never thought of that!” Doria 
dropped her cigarette and laid an impulsive hand on 
Peril’s. “You do it. I’m such a fool on the phone. 
Just say the Doctor’s away, and nurse needs help 
with Pam.” 

It was not easy to refuse so simple a service, yet 
Peril felt a curious unwillingness as she went towards 
the instrument in the hall.* She got the Camp with- 

41 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


out difficulty, and spoke it in her calm, unhurried 
way. 

“Hello! ... Is Major Heseltine there? ... I 
am speaking from The Hill . . . yes, Dr. Kelly’s.” 

A moment later a strong careless voice said in her 
ear: 

“That you, Doc.?” 

“No . . . Miss Kelly speaking,” her answer went 
back, cool and clear. “Mrs. Heseltine asked me to 
telephone. The Doctor is away, and they need help 
with Mr. Heseltine.” 

“Need help? Is he worse?” 

“Oh no ... I believe he is much better . . . but 
it seems that he insists on going out. They think 
you might be able to reason with him.” 

There was a short silence at the other end, then: 

“I’m very hard-pressed just now. Unless they 
absolutely need me . . .” 

But before he reached this point Peril had felt 
herself firmly pushed away, and the receiver being 
taken from her hand. 

“Of course we need you, Punch,” Doria’s voice 
was a caress. “Do you think I should bother you 
otherwise? I know how frightfully busy you are 

^ 42 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


• • . they tell me so every time I try to get you 
. . . three times this morning ... in vain! Do you 
think it is quite fair to stay away like this, Punch? 
... an eternity!” 

Peril hastened out of hearing; but she could not 
help wondering whether the telephone at Minto 
Lodge had broken down during the process of ring¬ 
ing up the Camp three times, “in vain”; and how 
much the fact had to do with Doria’s visit to The 
Hill? At all events, the latter came presently 
sauntering from the hall, looking as contented as a 
blue-eyed Persian kitten that has just had a saucer¬ 
ful of warm milk; and, having unfurled her 
capacious umbrella and established herself beneath 
it, she bade her hostess a pleasant adieu. After¬ 
wards Peril continued to sit beneath the trees, list¬ 
lessly stroking Evvie, her little bush-baby. Usually, 
from a habit of breakfasting with the dawn, she had 
an excellent eleven o’clock appetite, but to-day, 
somehow, Valpy’s buttermilk scones went unappre¬ 
ciated. In a little while the ring of a horse’s hoofs 
came out of the distance and beat smartly along 
towards Marshways.^ Peril sat very still until the 
last echo had completely died away, then she pressed 
43 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Evvie close to her breast, like a real baby, and gave 
a deep sigh. 


No doubt Major Heseltine succeeded in restrain¬ 
ing his cousin’s obstreperous activity, and making 
him see the unreasonableness of trying to ride before 
he could walk. But the funny part of it was that 
Pam declared to Peril, some days later, that the 
whole thing had been nothing more than a lark, and 
he had never entertained the faintest notion of 
mounting a horse, or that Doria took him seriously. 
Moreover, it came out quite casually that Doria 
herself had been the one to receive the Doctor’s 
message that he was going into the country and 
wouldn’t be back till five. Perhaps she had forgot¬ 
ten this when she came seeking him at The Hill an 
hour later! At any rate, the only person in a 
position to consider all the pieces of the puzzle, and 
to wonder why some of them did not quite fit, hap¬ 
pened to be one whose habit was of tranquil reflection 
rather than constructive criticism. Enough for her, 
and more than enough perhaps, to note that the 
riding parties ... of two . . . had recommenced. 

44 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


In the cool of the day, and again in the glamorous 
dusk which should surely be the exclusive property 
of lovers, Doria’s silver chimes rang on the Umtete 
Road, mingling with the deeper notes of Punch 
Heseltine’s voice. True, he rarely laughed, and 
when he did, it was curtly, like a man with some 
source of secret irritation, or grimly as one indulg¬ 
ing in self-mockery. And when he rode alone the set 
of his jaw was neither amused nor felicitous. 

But how should Mrs. Heseltine’s mood be other¬ 
wise than that of the lark at Heaven’s gate singing, 
when every day and from all sides she was the re¬ 
cipient of congratulations on her husband’s marvel¬ 
lous return to health. Quite fitting surely that she 
should positively glow with happiness, so that peo¬ 
ple exclaimed more than ever at her beauty, and 
bowed the head and bent the knee before her sweet¬ 
ness and light. As for Pam Heseltine, Umtete was 
proud of him, and prouder still of its own special 
medical genius, Bruce Kelly. Even he must have 
felt a stirring of pride, though he gave no sign un¬ 
less by looking a little redder and stouter and 
vaguer than ever; but impossible that he should not 
have been gratified by such a rapid response to his 
45 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


skill. Never was such a change seen in a man as in 
Pam Heseltine. His cough had gone, flesh, colour, 
and appetite increased daily; cynical despair had 
been replaced by the light of returning hope and a 
touching gentleness and gratitude. After all, when 
a man grown accustomed to the creaking of the 
gates of death is suddenly reprieved and shown a 
vista of long life and prosperity, he would be poor 
stuff if it didn’t bring all that was best in him to the 
top. And Pam Heseltine had never been of poor 
stuff—only wild stuff, and gay stuff, and stuff that 
adventurers are made of. And all the Heseltines were 
like that; their trouble was that they could not sit 
still, or be dull: they would rather commit follies, 
make the wildest blunders, and dash into maddest 
excesses and lose their all than do nothing. Doubtless 
Pam would do these things again when completely 
restored to himself, but meantime he was chas¬ 
tened and humbled, and like a child in his delight of 
the returning strength to his long limbs and wasted 
muscles. The regime , however, was drastic; Bruce 
Kelly stood no nonsense. Drinks were cut down to a 
minimum, strict diet and regular habits enforced. 
The magic injections were given twice a day, fol- 
46 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

lowed by three hours of prone and absolute repose. 
Peril usually went down after the second treatment, 
in the late afternoon, and relieved the nurse by sit¬ 
ting with the patient. Doria could not do this, as 
it was, of course, the time for her ride, from which 
now she often did not get back till after dark. 
Keable also chose this time for recreation by going 
up to see Valpy, with whom she had formed an in¬ 
timacy. Everyone would be away, in fact, and no 
sound in the quiet house except the soft monotony of 
Peril’s voice reading Shelley and Adam Lindsay Gor¬ 
don. Pam had never been much addicted to verse, 
but he now declared to Peril that he loved it. For¬ 
tunately she did not hear him remark later to Punch, 
that he could stand even Bolshevik-propaganda writ¬ 
ten in Russia by Lenin, as long as it was read to 
him in a voice like spring water flowing over the 
strings of a harp. Punch could not help being 
struck by this poetical simile coming from an un- 
poetical source. He thought it remarkable too that 
Pam’s metaphor should symbolically resemble the 
Doctor’s. Spring water . . . lily pool! Both cool, 
sweet, fresh things, that a man with fevers in his 
blood . . . and darkness in his soul might seek . . . 
47 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


perhaps! ... He laughed his curt furious laugh. 
What had he to do with sweet, cool waters? His 
taste was for wine . . . and wine in an exquisite 
goblet offered itself, sparkling, leaping to the lips 
. . . daring him to drink. And he dared not drink. 
Something in him forbade that blood treachery. Yet 
. . . he had ceased to absent himself from tempta¬ 
tion. He looked into the cup . . . daily his lips 
drew nearer . . . 

It was strange that he should never have seen 
Peril nearer, or clearer, since that first evening in 
the shadows. Always she had just gone when they 
returned from riding. Only echoes of her remained, 
unusual fragrances from the little bunches of sweet 
herbs she brought daily—grateful, affectionate 
words from Pam, allusions to spring water and the 
music of harps. Punch Heseltine could not tell why 
these things should disturb him, even interest him. 
But they did. 

Then, one evening something further happened. 
Fate’s little games with human pieces never stand 
still; they are progressive, and must be played to 
the end; and the slightest, most unexpected of in¬ 
cidents and things serve as gambits 0 
48 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


He and Doria got back late. It was dark when 
he swung her down from her saddle at the gate, 
and an unexpected swerve of hers brought her into 
his arms, her lips almost to his. The thing was 
bound to have occurred, only that on the very in¬ 
stant someone came out of the gate behind them, 
someone in white, who sped down the road like a 
ghost, while the startled horses leaped and reared, 
taking all Punch’s time to manage them, till the 
grooms came running. Then, when they got inside, 
the first thing he saw was a big shady hat hanging 
by its ribbon to the arm of a chair, and Pam said: 

“My Nerve Specialist has forgotten her hat! A 
job for you, Punch, on your way home.” 

“Why should Punch bother?” asked Doria, 
fiercely petulant. “Let her get it to-morrow when 
she comes.” 

“And get sunstroke in coming,” protested Pam. 
But Punch had already taken hold of the hat, and 
he was one of those who do not easily relinquish 
what they have laid hands on. Doria’s petulant 
opposition only determined him the more upon the 
errand. 

It had come to that now between them: trial of 
49 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


strength. Gradually he had been discovering in her, 
behind that fragile, childlike air, an amazing quality 
of resolution; and in turn imposing upon her notice 
an iron quality of his own. To-day, out on the 
veld, things had reached a climax. An unspoken 
climax, of course, as everything remained unspoken, 
even while the crimson and purple banners of desire 
flaunted back and forth between them. In those 
eloquent silences when only their eyes and pulses 
spoke she had tried to break him to her wishes as 
she had broken men before. All her life she had been 
engaged in this entrancing game: making men slaves 
to her beauty, just for the short wild flame of 
pleasure in it while it was new. And here was one 
who would not be enslaved! One w T ho curiously 
delighted and enthralled her, yet would not capitu¬ 
late! True, at the gate just now, she had almost 
won! But the passing of that hateful girl . . ./ 
That he was mad for her she had not a doubt. 
Men’s passions were an open book to her. Yet, he 
refrained from the secret luscious fruits she offered 
to his thirsty lips! What held him back? At first 
she did not know. It never occurred to her. Then, 
with fuller knowledge of the man, she divined it. 

50 



THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Loyalty! But loyalty to another man put before 
love for her! He must be punished for that. Yes, 
she would punish him terribly—later: after the first 
tense sweetness—when she had wearied of him as 
she always wearied. Meanwhile she felt a thrill 
never before experienced while she put him to the 
torment as only a woman of her beauty, subtlety, 
and experience could do. All that there was in her 
of witchery she exercised; all she had of sweet en¬ 
snaring graces she used. With siren eyes she mocked 
his backwardness; seducing lips smiled at his 
scruples. She scorched him with the fire that ate 
her, and in turn felt the heat of flame in him. She 
tempted and tormented him to breaking-point, and 
then . . . well, he simply didn’t break, that was all. 
She hated him then, realising that such a man could 
be loved. But love was not in her scheme, and never 
had been. Pleasure, yes, sweet, short draughts from 
the cup of secret passion: no more. Aways she had 
withdrawn unscathed from these hidden liaisons: a 
little bored, perhaps, but only with the man—never 
with the pastime. The things she loved were dif¬ 
ferent. Power, place, position, money. These were 
what she wanted. Pam’s health she loved, because 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


it meant these things. Scawnshane and the Mar- 
quessate of Kenchester. Those were things to love. 

This was the kind of woman Doria Heseltine was. 
But she met her Waterloo. For in the hour that 
Punch Heseltine, true to some fine thing in his nature 
that would not be betrayed, baulked at blood- 
treason, he dominated his cousin’s wife. The knife 
she had aimed so often at men’s hearts, so cleverly, 
cruelly, and happily in her own immunity, began to 
take a backward curve towards her own. 

With the hat in his hand Punch opened the gate 
at The Hill and let himself into a dim dewy place 
of tall trees and gentle English scents. He had 
never been there before, but the paths were outlined 
with whitewashed stones that glimmered in the dark¬ 
ness. Sometimes he stepped upon some mass of 
fragrance that had overflowed its bed, and the aroma 
of silver thyme arose, cutting the air like the cry of 
a lute. The still night yet seemed full of sighs. 
Away up the hill he could see lights of a house, but 
he did not hurry towards it. He liked sauntering in 
this garden full of purple darkness, sighs, and whis¬ 
perings. Suddenly a different sound reached his 
ear, a soft moaning sigh with something human in 
52 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


it! And it was quite close! He took a few more 
silent steps and found himself on a sort of terrace, 
with faintly outlined objects that looked like chairs, 
and something swaying softly among the trees. A 
hammock with a slim line of whiteness in it. It was 
from thence the gentle, moaning sighs were issuing. 
A girl lay there, softly and deeply weeping . . . 
long, slow sobbing that shook the air about her. 

He stood still, distressed and embarrassed. What 
should he do? Go away as silently as he had come? 
That would be best, perhaps. But something kind 
in him did, not agree. Something strong and tender 
in him desired to comfort that weeping child, and 
impulsively he put out a hand; it touched other 
hands pressed to a face ... all drenched and 
drowned with tears, floods of tears ! The youth of it 
reached him to the quick . . . only the very young 
have these fountains of tears to pour out in their 
sorrows. 

But she had started wildly at his touch, and there 
was terror in her cry: “Who is that?” 

“Punch Heseltine,” he answered, reassuringly, and 
sat beside her in one of the shadowy chairs. “I 
brought your hat.” 


53 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


There was a moment’s silence; then, to his sur¬ 
prise, the soft shuddering sounds began again. A 
sob fell out, then another and another. She had 
resumed her weeping as if she could not help it. Like 
a child, she must weep her sorrow out. But he could 
not bear it. His heart was shaken in him by those 
long shuddering sobs. 

“Don’t—don’t,” he implored. “What is it? 
Can’t I help?” 

“My little bush-baby is dead. A dog tore it to 
pieces while I was away.” So simply and childishly 
she said it, and dissolved once more into flooding 
tears. His heart too seemed to dissolve. He won¬ 
dered how anyone or anything in this world could 
comfort children for their poignant sorrows, why a 
child stayed in such a rotten world at all! 

“I’m so sorry. . . . Don’t cry any more, dear.” 
He said it simply and naturally. She had turned 
him into a child too. They were two children sit¬ 
ting there in the dark. He took one of her wet, cold 
little hands and held it strongly in his big warm 
one. For a moment it stirred, seemed to strive like 
a caught bird, then it curled and nestled and was 
still. They were both still. But through him 
54 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


presently, a hurricane of emotion and sensation 
pierced and swept. Shame for the base fires that 
had scorched his soul these past days . . . gladness 
for that blood-loyalty that had kept him from the 
unpardonable thing, thankfulness for the love of 
clean loyalty his ancestors had sowed in his nature 
. . . and then, a cooling, lovely peace, winging from 
out of space into the secret places of his heart. All 
this, from the feel of a girl’s hand curled in his! 
For a few strange, wonderful seconds they stayed so, 
then a dinner-gong boomed on a mellow note through 
the garden, breaking the spell. The girl slid to her 
feet, took the hat he was still holding, and thanked 
him shyly. In a few moments he was riding hard 
for Camp. He neglected an engagement in town for 
dinner and cards, and dined alone at the Camp 
instead—a rare occurrence for him, but he had 
things to think of ... a new programme to con¬ 
struct not only for the morrow, but for many days 
ahead. 

It is always when men take upon themselves thus 
the onus of their destiny, give signs of trying to 
fashion the future for themselves, that Fate at her 
most ironic makes an idle gesture, just to show that 


55 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


she is still there, with those fateful instruments, the 
spindle and the shears, in her hands. 

Just as Punch had finished, for that night at least, 
his plans and calculations, and was on the point of 
retiring, a constable entered with two delayed wires 
brought in by runner. One came from the C.O. of 
Police and dealt with a project long impending— 
a tour of inspection in Northern Rhodesia, for w T hich 
Punch’s immediate attendance at Buluwayo was now 
required. That was that, then! and most definitely 
accounted for the near future without regard to 
any personal plans formed by himself! 

But a more ambitious and dramatic gesture on 
the part of Fate revealed itself in the second wire. 
This proved to be a cable from London, sent by 
the firm of solicitors who for a couple of centuries 
had managed the Heseltine family affairs; and ran 
thus: 

“Regret ask you to break news to Mr. Pamfreville 
Heseltine that his brother Richard was killed to-day 
at Cresta Run. Lord Kenchester, shattered by blow, 
instructs us to remind you of your position as heir 
in event of non-survival of your cousin.” 

“Non-survival?” muttered Punch Heseltine, star- 


56 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


ing. Then a light broke in upon him. “Of course 
they don’t realise that the heir is heading for health 
and beauty once more. Not much non-survival 
about old Pam now!” He smiled, then his smile 
faded, thinking of poor young Dick cut off in the 
flower of youth. 


57 



PART II 


59 



PART II 


It was out of the question to take the news of 
Dick’s death over to Minto Lodge that night. Not 
so much because of the lateness of the hour, as 
because Punch Heseltine’s nature revolted against 
burdening a sick man’s night with sorrow. For that 
Pam would be heartbroken he knew. Dick was an 
only brother, the baby of the house, and the last 
hope of that branch of the family. Besides, he had 
been such a splendid youngster. One of those gay, 
brave, clean-hearted boys of whom it is afterwards 
recognised that there was something about them not 
of this world. Most people have met, at some time, 
one or more of these bright brief-sojourners, and 
been left with a haunting memory of them. During 
the war, how often had not Punch encountered them! 
A sort of fatal radiance marked them that the bullet 
or wandering piece of shell could never miss. The 
61 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


stamp of recall, Punch used to call it to himself 
. . . . recall to the Golden Halls of a King who 
could no longer spare such gallant knights to earth. 
And now he remembered that he had seen the stamp 
clearly marked on young Dick. ... It is always 
remembered afterwards. 

“Glory, coupled with an early tomb!” 

Yet the boy was spared through the last year of 
war—the only one he had been old enough to join 
in—to be killed amusing himself! Leaping from some 
slope above the Cresta Run, youth and courage 
rushing hot in his veins, through the crystal-cold 
air into eternity! Well! A good death! A death 
that Pam would understand, anyhow, however much 
it broke him up. Thank God, old Pam was a sports¬ 
man, and as such, even if he didn’t read much poetry, 
knew the significance of those two lines: 

“At the doors of life, by the gates of breath. 

There are worse tilings waiting for men than Death.” 

Something to be grateful for, too, that Pam was 
so much better that no bad consequences need be 
feared from the blow, once the sharpness of it was 
62 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


over. However, it occurred to Punch that he ought 
to get Bruce Kelly’s opinion before doing anything 
in the matter, and with this in his mind he stopped 
his horse at the gate of The Hill next morning, and 
entered once more into that garden of the last 
night’s sweet and subtle experience. It still had a 
magic air, he thought, as he mounted the winding 
path to the house, and caught again in his nostrils 
the sharp odours of herbs and scented things. A 
man might capture enchantment here, something to 
carry with him for refreshment through the dusty 
wastes of life, something to hide in his heart for ever! 

The Doctor stood on the verandah, just about to 
set off on his morning rounds, patting his pockets, 
looking at his watch, and consulting his note-book, 
while Peril waited gravely beside him, holding his 
hat and a little leather case. Thus Punch saw her 
for the first time in the broad eye of day, under the 
scrutiny of Africa’s morning sun, a piercing indaga- 
tion that only youth can bear with equanimity: 

“Rose-white youth 

Passionate pale . . .” 

And on Peril, in her smock of larkspur blue, it en¬ 
hanced a look of dawn and dew. He saw at last that 
63 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


her eyes were of a clear warm honey-colour. Faint 
crescents of shadow beneath them were the sole 
trace of last night’s wild storm, and they gave him 
an odd thrill. He immensely admired self-control 
and serenity in man or woman, but it thrilled him 
to remember that she could weep so wildly, that 
under that slumbering pool of lilies there were pas¬ 
sionate fountains of emotion. The thought that he 
shared this secret with her was like a sudden precious 
gift put into his hand. 

All the same he could see they were both wonder¬ 
ing why he had come, and he made haste to explain 
that he wanted advice from the Doctor as to break¬ 
ing some family bad news to Pam. At which the 
girl softly and swiftly disappeared among the trees 
of the garden. 

“It is very distressing,’' Bruce Kelly decided with 
knitted brow. “But you would not be justified in 
keeping it back, and thank the Lord he is well enough 
to stand it now. A week or two ago I couldn’t have 
answered for him.” 

They walked down to Minto Lodge together, and 
the Doctor elected to wait in the garden, on the off- 
chance that he might be required, and also, he said, 
64 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

because he wanted to have a quiet chat with Nurse 
Gordon. 

“Send her out here to me, and mind you have your 
cousin to yourself "when you tell him. Keep Mrs. 
Heseltine and everyone else out of the room, if pos¬ 
sible.” 

With which instruction Punch found himself very 
much in accord. The Heseltine men were not much 
given to audiences when they were in grief. Nor to 
wearing their sorrows on their sleeves or anywhere 
else where they might be easily observed. The more 
^astonishing, then, that Pam should instantly have 
divined from one glance at his cousin’s masldike 
face that something was wrong. Sickness seemed to 
have endowed him with a sense of second sight that 
he certainly did not possess in health. 

“Out with it, Punch!” 

“Bad news, old chap.” 

Pam Heseltine took the cigarette from his mouth 
and pressed it, red-end down, on one of the break¬ 
fast plates still littering the table. A tightened, 
whitened look came about his lips. He knew it 
could not be the “old man.” Punch would not make 
a song and dance about that piece of intelligence, 
65 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

for they were not hypocrites, and neither of them 
cared a tuppenny damn about their cousin, the ego¬ 
tistical, unlovable, vindictive old Marquess. And it 
couldn’t be Doria, for he had spoken to her through 
her door adjoining the dining-room not ten minutes 
ago. And Punch, the next best, was here before him. 
Then . . .? 

“Not ... not young Dick . . . ?” His voice broke 
on the name, and he knew the answer before it came. 

“Yes,” Punch answered gently. “Young Dick. 
On the slopes above the Cresta.” 

Pam gave a low groan, like a man who had re¬ 
ceived a mortal thrust, and sat back closing his 
eyes. That old place! He saw it clearly as he had 
seen it many a time. Steep allures of whiteness and 
softness, untrodden, unspeakably inviting . . . far 
ridges of pine prickling and darkling against a sky 
of dazzling blue . . . bright sunshine . . . rose- 
pink and hyacinthine shadows dancing under distant 
ice-peaks. That old place! To go back on one of 
the Heseltines! And young Dick too! “The best 
of the bunch!” he muttered. 

“Yes . . . the best of us, Pam. Far better have 
been me.” 

66 


( 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Pam lifted his head and regarded his cousin with 
eyes grown desolate. 

“Or better still me . . . for all the good I am in 
this blasted world. You will have children to carry 
on the old line. I never shall.” 

They did not know how long Doria had been with 
them before they noticed her, so softly had she 
opened the door from her room, and remained stand¬ 
ing, a lovely spectre in her jade-green wrapper, 
glimmering through her mysterious shroudings of 
tulle like a tinted pearl. At all events, it was 
not necessary to repeat the tragic fact. She had 
gathered that at least, and when she spoke it was 
only to ask in subdued and mournful voice when it 
happened, and how. But of course Punch could only 
repeat the bare event. The rest was surmise, until 
more news came in; but he and Pam, old ski-ers 
themselves, had already filled in details just as they 
knew without telling that it could not have been the 
Cresta itself where the boy was killed, but those 
steep slopes above it, so treacherously liable to the 
avalanche that carries a man to a swift and rushing 
death over the precipice. He had been careful not 
to bring the cablegram with him, because of features 
67 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


in it which he considered it unnecessary to obtrude 
upon his cousin’s attention, and it was disconcerting 
to find Doria exhibiting an inconvenient curiosity. 

“Where is the cablegram? . . . How strange 
they should send it to you. Punch, instead of to 
us!” 

“They knew Pam was ill, of course ... or has 
been. . . .” 

“Not strange at all,” interrupted Pam harshly. 
“The old man looks upon me as good as dead already 
. . . and you, my dear, don’t come into it at all. 
Don’t forget that. A different thing if we’d had 
children.” His unhappy gaze fixed itself on her 
with a hostility that astonished Punch as much as 
the words. He had never known his cousin speak 
to or look at his wife with anything but a cynical 
amusement tempered by tenderness. But what were 
these acrid mutterings that now fell from him? “If 
you’d chosen to have children!” He gave her a 
fierce and bitter glance. “As it is, you must remem¬ 
ber that Punch comes next . . . Punch and his chil¬ 
dren.” His head sagged wearily forward between 
his shoulders. “And a damned good thing too!” he 
muttered. 


08 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


This was miserably embarrassing to Punch. Un¬ 
bearable indeed, and he got up hastily. The obliga¬ 
tion of kinship that had brought him did not include 
listening to domestic recrimination, and he was 
astonished and annoyed at his cousin’s attack, even 
as he could not but admire Doria’s mien under it. 
She stood there silent and proud, looking from one 
man to the other with a brooding reflectiveness. 

“What really matters, old man”—Punch laid a 
hand on his cousin’s shoulders in passing, and spoke 
with a tenderness he could not withhold from that 
stricken man—“is that you should go on improving 
in health as you have done. And mind, I expect to 
see you as strong as I am myself, when I get back 
in a month or two from Northern Rhodesia.” 

“Northern Rhodesia /” Reflectiveness left Doria’s 
gaze, giving place to a tense and quivering interest. 
The words leaped into the room like something alive. 
Even Pam, lost in miserable reflection, looked up 
inquiringly to his wife’s face and seemed arrested by 
something he saw there. Meanwhile, Punch calmly 
propounded the matter of his sudden summons to 
Buluwayo and the unavoidability of an immediate 
departure. 


09 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“But, Punch . . ” 

Deliberately he ignored the pleading urgency of 
her eyes. They beckoned, they called, almost they 
wound arms about him. But keeping his careless 
air, he held firm in a resolution not to be detained. 

“I’m afraid it can’t be helped ... I must abso¬ 
lutely say good-bye now. Much as I should like to 
look in again, it will be simply impossible ... a 
hundred things to do before I go . . . got to catch 
the noon train, or there’ll be the dickens to pay 

“But, Punch, I must speak to you before. Just 
wait until I get into a gown . . . I’ll be out in the 
garden in a few minutes.” 

“Can’t be done, Doria. Must go ... by the 
way, the Doctor’s in the garden waiting to come 
and see Pam. . . . sorry, but I’m rushed to death 
this morning. Besides, I shall only be gone a couple 
of months at the outside. . . . Now, remember, Pam, 
my dear merchant, you’re to be as fit as a fiddle 
when I return. . . . Good-bye, Doria ... So long, 
old man . . .” By sheer dint of talking all the time 
and taking no note of anything said or looked at 
him, he got away at last. But he was breathing 
70 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


hard, like a man who has escaped a deep danger, 
when he rode off at a gallop, down the road. And 
he managed the noon train without seeing anyone 
again, except those whom it was his business to see. 
Moreover, he contrived to evade the telephone calls 
that pursued him throughout the morning, whether 
in club or camp or town-office, with a certain 
anonymous urgency. Someone was moving heaven 
and earth to communicate with him, but that quality 
of iron in him resisted the demand. He intended to 
remain faithful to certain resolutions made the night 
before—resolutions that a man who considered him¬ 
self a clean Englishman with a love of the “game” 
as played by “white men” had got to make and keep. 
Fate had given a hand by calling him away from 
Umtete at this juncture. Also, there was something 
else . . . something that had nestled in his hand 
and winged into the silent places of his heart. There 
was a girl with warm honey-coloured eyes. A pool 
of lilies! 

Pam Heseltine did not get over his brother’s 
death as well as could have been hoped, considering 
the firm foundation his general health had regained. 
71 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

He brooded. And more than once in the first few 
weeks Dr. Kelly regretted that Punch should have 
been called away just then, for of all people that, 
gay and amusing policeman might have distracted 
the patient from his sorrow. Bruce Kelly indeed was 
astonished at the fund of grief revealed in the man. 
It seemed almost unnatural; as if the boy had been a 
son instead of a brother. 

But that was just it. Dick had been more of a 
son than a brother, for when their mother died, in 
giving him birth, the elder boy, already of age, had 
expended all there was of generosity in him on the 
little motherless chap. Fathering him too, for their 
father died w r ithin a year, and there was no one else 
but Pam to see young Dick through Eton scrapes 
and Oxford escapades. 

And always the younger son remained sweet and 
clean and gallant, and always the elder one in the 
worst moments of his extravagant career had been 
in the habit of thinking: “Never mind. Vm a rotter, 
but there’s Dick to carry on. Dick will make good. 
Dick’s the boy!” And now Dick’s bright young 
flame had been blown out, and it seemed as if the 
world stood still for Pam Heseltine. 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Not that he regretted or distrusted Punch in the 
position of heir, for, after all, Punch was his father’s 
brother’s son, blood of his blood, a true Heseltine. 
But somehow, no one (not even Punch himself) had 
ever thought of him as heir to the Marquessate. 
How indeed should they, with three good lives 
between, and one of them a strong and hefty young¬ 
ster in the flower of manhood? 

Punch was all right, of course, but he didn’t hap¬ 
pen to be Dick. That was all. And when one is 
forty-five one is a bit late in acclimatising oneself 
to new ideas and changed arrangements. A bit late 
for everything, in fact, thought Pam, except to 
brood over new griefs and old disappointments. 
That old secret bitterness, for instance, of Doria’s 
refusal to bear children! While Dick lived, the hurt 
of it had been kept from being too poignantly un¬ 
bearable. But now . . . now, after all these years, 
he had upbraided her with it in the presence of 
Punch! Good God, it was unbelievable! What on 
earth could have come over him ? And she had taken 
it like a saint! Never a word then, or after. Nor had 
she sulked. No, she had acted like a perfect angel 
ever since, as if she had been in the wrong, not he. 

73 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Yes, by degrees it became clear to him that from 
the day of Punch’s bringing the bad news, Doria 
had become a changed woman. Freely and gener¬ 
ously now she offered her companionship to him, 
feverishly she spent herself in efforts to entertain 
and distract him. No longer did he need any other 
nurse or companion. 

And Doria could be a companion when she liked 
. . . the sort he had dreamed of in those sweet 
halcyon days when he married her, believing that life 
was going to be something more, at last, than a 
fevered round of pleasure. Yes, for a little while 
he had dreamed dreams . . . seen visions of a real 
life, with children about them ... a son! ... a 
son who would have saved him from himself! But 
Doria soon smashed up that dream; soon showed 
him that her views of life were only those he had 
hoped to discard. Merely he had found another 
devotee of pleasure, one more avid for it even than 
himself. Except that her pleasures were different. 
He didn’t, in fact, know just what her pleasures 
were, for they soon drifted apart, and went their 
different ways, as people can do while dwelling under 
the same roof. But whatever they were, he knew 
74 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


that she enjoyed them, for always she had the air 
of one who ate and drank of pleasure. Her lips were 
red, her eyes intoxicated with it. She breathed and 
radiated love of it. That came at last to be the 
difference between them. Pleasure had brought him 
to the point of death, but Doria throve on it; per¬ 
haps because she never in all forgot those two 
essentials, her health and her beauty. Those always 
came first. Pam could even admire her for that. 
There was nothing grudging about him. He could 
admire anything that was well done—even selfishness. 

But this new Doria! . . . born on the day after 
Dick’s death, and now nearly a month old, seemed 
to have no trace of selfishness in her. Rather was 
she a saint, a companion, a nurse; a mate such as 
he had dreamed of in those old days! And it was a 
strange and wonderful thing that at last she 
even seemed to be forgetting that passion for her 
own beauty which had always infuriated him even 
while he laughed at it. Her passion now—could it 
be true?—seemed to be for nothing but his society! 
The madness for her own beauty had passed. Some¬ 
times even, when they were alone, she let him see her 
without shroudings and cloudings of veils, without 


75 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


scarlet paint on her lips or powder on her cheeks, 
looking a little worn perhaps, rather like a haggard 
angel bored with heaven; but like that he found her 
ravishing. 

And lately she had begun to make him promises! 
With her eyes and the touch of her lips on his she 
made him promises that beggared the richest mo¬ 
ments he had known, bringing back the thrill of 
youth into his veins, making him wonder if he was 
mad to have thought it too late to find with her still 
those things he had dreamed of in the long ago. 
After all, neither of them was really old. Certainly 
Doria was not. She could still look like a girl at 
times, even without her shroudings, especially at 
nights; and she had kept every line and curve of her 
exquisite body. He was not old either . . . forty- 
five is not old. Not if a woman is learning to love 
you all over again—a beautiful woman like Doria. 
If only he had not wasted and destroyed his health! 
But he would get it back again—he determined that 
at last, under her caresses and loving care. He 
would cast off this lethargy of grief for Dick, this 
depression of body and soul, and grow young again. 
He would do as Punch had bade him, and become as 
76 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

“fit as a fiddle.” These were the resolves that Pam 
Heseltine made within a month or so of his cousin’s 
departure, filling his wife’s eyes with tender, happy 
tears when he told her of them. But deep in him he 
sometimes felt a dull foreboding that the decision 
came too late; that it did not lie in his own hands, 
as it seemed to have done only a few weeks back. 
However, he said nothing to his wife of this, nor to 
his medical man. Pain and he had been fellow- 
sojourners for so long that he had grown used to 
the companionship. And never had his been the role 
of a whiner or quitter. Always without complaint 
he had taken the “medicine” so well earned by him¬ 
self. But lately he was often aware of a new and 
unknown element supplementing the old tortures, a 
different form of rack for his nervous system, a more 
subtle pair of pincers tearing his heart and brain, 
and though, privately, he considered it too much 
of a darned good thing, he did not complain. He 
just hoped it would pass. And after all, some parts 
of the day were free of it. The early-morning hours 
were the worst, before anyone was about, and he 
suffered them alone, and said nothing. Gradually 
the misery passed, leaving a great weariness and 
77 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


exhaustion, but he pulled himself together, and by 
afternoon felt considerably better; towards evening 
he had almost recovered. At dinner-time he was at 
his best. Afterwards, the night brought sleep in¬ 
stead of the old insomnia; but even in that some¬ 
thing unusual and disconcerting obtruded itself. 
Heavy, dreamless sleep it was, a plunging into un- 
conciousness, like going deep into fathomless seas, 
and feeling all the weight of them pressing him 
under, down, down. He would wake at last full of 
a nameless fear, a feeling as of some horrible fate 
escaped. Then, at about three in the morning, the 
pains would begin. 

Naturally these things and the result of them were 
not lost upon one person’s practised eye. However 
silent and stoical the patient might be, the Doctor 
knew well enough that the remarkable improvement 
of a month back was not being sustained or renewed. 
Bruce Kelly watched Heseltine’s newly-found colour 
fade, his skin return to its parchmenty texture, his 
profile resume its hawk-like sharpness, and it puzzled 
him considerably. The daily berry-injections were 
being continued and always gave a good reaction. 
Yet each morning the Doctor detected something 
78 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


adverse, a slight change for the worse, a shade, a 
nuance, one that taken by itself would count for 
nothing. But when this happens daily . . . when 
shades and nuances accumulate . . . they can form 
a big shadow to sit upon a doctor’s mind and make 
him wear a worried look. 

Yet for the moment there seemed nothing to be 
done to improve matters. He knew that the in¬ 
jections were the right thing, and felt implicit faith 
in his own judgment. Moreover, conditions gen¬ 
erally were better now than when the treatment first 
started, and there seemed absolutely no reason why 
the patient should not at any time recommence his 
strides towards recovery. Cooler weather had set 
in, and the sick man became extraordinarily tract¬ 
able. Further, it was plain to the dullest intelligence 
that domestic harmony reigned as never before at 
Minto Lodge. Even the Doctor’s glance, vague for 
all things other than his work, could not but take 
in the transformation of the lovely Mrs. Heseltine 
into a devoted nurse and companion. And a wife 
utterly wrapped up in her husband’s welfare, with 
no room in her mind for any other interest, is an 
edifying sight. She no longer went riding, though 
79 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


naturally there were plenty of aspirants to the posi¬ 
tion of escort left vacant by the absconded police¬ 
man, including the Hon. John Camp, younger son of 
a War Peer, who sported the latest thing in spats 
and motor-cars and was known locally and briefly 
as Hon-Jon. But Doria persistently neglected all 
these and other social distractions offered by Umtete 
for the sake of having more leisure at her husband’s 
side. In the end Dr. Kelly had to remonstrate with 
her upon this subject, for it became clear to him 
that she as well as the patient was losing weight. 
Indeed, Keable could have verified this observation, 
for the maid’s massaging labours had lately become 
so light as to be practically negligible. Doria Hesel- 
tine kept thin nowadays without any extraneous as¬ 
sistance. The consuming fires of anxiety seemed to 
be doing the work which hitherto Keable’s nimble 
fingers had so satisfactorily performed. At any 
rate, Bruce Kelly did not at all approve of the look 
of strain she wore, and he took it upon himself to 
insist that the daily hour she allowed herself out of 
doors and usually spent in the garden at The Hill 
should be extended to two, her place at Pam Hesel- 
tine’s side taken meanwhile by Peril. 

80 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Doria withstood this at first, but the Doctor 
warned her he did not intend to have another patient 
on his hands, and that if she failed to do as directed 
he should have to reinstate Nurse Gordon as a per¬ 
manency, instead of only having her up from the 
Hospital twice a day, which had for some time past 
been the arrangement. 

At which threat Doria became docile in turn, 
obediently fulfilled the condition of staying out a 
full two hours, and pleased the Doctor much by 
telling him that she had come to adore his garden 
as the loveliest spot in Rhodesia. 

As for Peril, she found her “on-duty” shifts with 
the patient strangely different from those of the 
past, either at the time when he expected to die and 
didn’t give a damn anyway, or the later period when 
he had felt himself coming back to life and rejoiced 
in it like a child. The gay and cheerful Pam had 
disappeared as completely as the sardonic, obstrep¬ 
erous one, and though in a way this Pam seemed 
happier than either, it troubled her that he sat so 
still in his chair or lay so immobile on his sofa, never 
wanting to play cards now, nor appearing to take 
any pleasure in reading or conversation, but filled 
81 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

rather with an immense listlessness that yet seemed 
purely physical and in pathetic contrast to the fever 
of hope and longing in his eyes. 

Almost as if he did not wish her to read that 
burning hope in them, he nearly always kept his 
eyes closed while Peril was with him, sometimes re¬ 
maining silent for so long that the girl would feel 
a tremor of fear, and leave off reading, or make a 
slight noise for the sheer relief of seeing him lift 
his lids. But she could not help noticing that the 
return of Doria from her walk instantly cheered 
him up. The very sound of her step in the garden 
brightened his face. It was wonderful. Wonder¬ 
ful, too, the change in Doria! The care and con¬ 
sideration she now lavished on him, in place of the 
careless selfishness of the Doria Peril once had 
known! After her return there would follow a jolly 
little interlude of talk and laughter, Pam revived 
from his listlessness, and Doria mixed him the sun¬ 
downer he was once more permitted by Dr. Kelly 
to take, since a certain amount of stimulant and 
“bucking up” seemed to be generally needed. 
Then Peril would leave them, and go back by her¬ 
self through the dusk, marvelling a little, hoping 
82 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


much, fearing she knew not what, and thinking a 
great deal of one whose name she now scarcely ever 
heard. For so wrapped up in themselves were Doria 
and her husband that they had not a thought to 
spare between them, it seemed, for one who only a 
few weeks before stood daily on their doorstep, an 
ever-welcome visitor. The name of Punch Heseltine 
never fell from their lips. It was as though he 
had ceased to exist, instead of being only a few 
hundred miles away somewhere in the same country, 
and due back at any time. Peril found it passing 
strange. Something in it, too, to resent. Yet 
surely she ought only to have been glad and thank¬ 
ful to think of that happy pair she had just left 
together! 

There was no ambiguity, at all events, about Pam 
Heseltine’s contentment in being alone with his wife. 
This was the hour he had looked forward to all 
day, keeping quiet for it in the hope that all the 
sooner pain would fade. He could be fairly certain 
now of a few hours of temporary well-being, and 
humble gratitude filled him that it should come at 
eventide, the time he and Doria were usually alone. 
What matter if he had to pay for it afterwards, 


83 




THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


with the pangs of hell, as he always did, in bed, 
when his heart would suddenly want to stop for good 
just before he fell into that deep dark pit of sleep 
from which it seemed there would be no returning. 
He had spoken to Kelly only this morning about 
that horrible nightmare of sleep, and Kelly had 
listened with that vague, dreamy air and made no 
comment. Nothing to be done about it, evidently. 
Grin and bear it, Pam concluded. What did it 
matter anyhow, as long as he had these lovely 
evening hours alone with Doria and new-found hap¬ 
piness ? 

This was the time when she was at her sweetest, 
waiting on him with her own hands, trailing round 
the dinner-table to do things for him, gay and witty 
as always after her two hours’ rest, as though she 
had been communing with the gods instead of lying 
in a hammock under the trees, as she said she 
mostly did. Invariably she came back more vivid, 
more alive, fuller of hope and plans for their future 
together. Sometimes, listening to her, a strange 
fear would grip his heart, remembering that menac¬ 
ing sleep awaiting him, followed by the early- 
morning agony of knives in his vitals. But Doria 


84 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


seemed so unconscious of anything being wrong, 
so confident that one of these days, soon, would 
find them both at Scawnshane, well and happy. 
Almost she persuaded him past his own beliefs and 
fears. 

No wonder they spun out this time of theirs 
together as long as possible, sitting late at the table 
over liqueurs and smokes. Doria made the coffee 
herself in a little Cona machine, and poured it for 
him with her own hands, helping him to liqueur and 
cutting and lighting his cigar. Then she would 
steal round the table, so alluring in her loose tea- 
gown, and slip on to his knee, her lovely daffodil 
head against his, her scented cheek to his lips. Her 
arm would be round his neck, and his about the de¬ 
licious curve of her waist. Anyone looking on might, 
perhaps, think it absurd for two people, over ten 
years married, to be indulging in these enchanting 
caresses. But Pam didn’t think so, and Doria was 
never absurd, only tender, fanciful, and divinely full 
of variety. He had never guessed what a wonderful 
wife he possessed until this last month. Sometimes 
it almost seemed worth while to have lost Dick for 
the sake of finding, in his grief, this new and ador- 
85 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


able Doria. But, immediately, he recanted that. 
No; the tragedy of Dick’s young life cut off in its 
bloom would never lose its sharpness, nor find com¬ 
pensation. 

But in this magic hour of his and Doria’s he could 
at least forget Death, and banish all sad things for 
awhile. Later, Nurse Gordon would come over from 
the Hospital to settle him for the night, before going 
back, and occasionally Kelly looked in to say a last 
word. 

Provoking that he should stalk in that evening, 
though, while the two were still lost in their happy 
reveries, actually surprising Doria on her husband’s 
knee, and causing a rather embarrassed scramble 
on her part. But Doria was too finished a femme 
du monde to be put out of countenance by any set of 
circumstances, and easily resumed her natural 
dignity, getting the Doctor a cup of coffee and in¬ 
sisting on his having a liqueur. Her husband’s and 
hers stood on the table beside their coffee cups, tw r o 
lovely vases of colour, one gleaming bright emerald, 
the other rosy red. “Which will you have, Doctor?” 
she gaily inquired. “A port light, or a danger 
signal ?” 


86 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“Both look highly injurious,” he smiled. “Which 
is which, may I ask? And of what composed?” 

“The green stuff is creme de menthe, of course— 
my favourite liqueur, and therefore personally rec¬ 
ommended. The other is sloe-gin—rather a pet of 
Pam’s.” 

“Sloe-gin. Upon my soul! Now where did you 
manage to get such a luxury as that? I don’t think 
I have ever seen it in the country before.” 

“Probably not; for when you gave permission for 
Pam to have little drinks again, I had to wire to 
Cape Town for these. Rhodesia never seems to go 
in for anything but whisky! Now, which will you 
try, Doctor? I really think the creme de mentlie 
is best as a digestive.” 

“Thank you ... I think I’d like a little of the 
port light.” The Doctor looked round for the 
bottle, but Doria, with the alacrity of a good 
hostess, had already reached the sideboard and 
taken it up. She stood there with a laughing back¬ 
ward glance at her husband. 

“Drink yours up quickly, Pam darling. . . . Dr. 
Kelly may forbid you it when he finds how fascinat¬ 
ingly heady it is.” 


87 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


She stood laughing and guarding the bottle, while 
her husband, entering into the jest, laughed too, and 
taking up his glass, drained the contents. 

“Oh come! I didn’t know I was such an ogre as 
all that,” remonstrated Bruce Kelly. “But of course 
I like to know what my patients are up to when I’m 
not on hand, and to sample for myself occasionally 
such dissipations as they are indulging in.” 

He took the glass of bright liqueur from his hos¬ 
tess’s hand and set it on the table before him. 

“Is that why you came round to-night?” quizzed 
Doria mischievously, holding out the cigars. “Do 
try one. Pam’s smokes are really to be recom¬ 
mended, like everything men choose for themselves. 
You’ll like them better than it seems you do my poor 
little sloe-gin!” For the Doctor was not drinking, 
only holding it up to the light. 

“This is not the famous port light you were drink¬ 
ing, Heseltine, surely?” 

“But of course,” cried Doria, surprise in her 
voice. “We’ve only got one kind. Oh, Doctor! 
Doctor! I can tell you are up to some mischief! 
I believe you’re going to pretend it’s too strong for 
him.” 


88 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“No . . . no, indeed!” The Doctor sipped at 
his glass and set it down. “There’s no harm in 
that, I’m sure. Only”—he looked at it critically 
again, then at Pam’s empty glass—“it seems to me 
a good deal lighter in colour than the stuff you 
were drinking.” 

“There, I knew it,” cried Doria, in mock despair; 
but Pam, looking at the Doctor’s drink, was inclined 
to agree. 

“It does look lighter, somehow. Still, I swear 
we’re not working a fraud on you, Doc.” He 
laughed at the idea, they all laughed together, and 
the Doctor finished his drink. 

“I mustn’t stop. What I really came for, Heseb 
tine, was to say that from what you told me this 
morning about your sleep, I think we’d better dis¬ 
continue the afternoon injections for a bit.” 

So the old Doc. had considered it, after all! 
thought Pam; but he wished no mention had been 
made of the matter before Doria, for as soon as they 
were alone again she insisted breathlessly on know¬ 
ing everything about his deep-sleeping, his racking 
pains; not a single pain or symptom would she let 
him off, and broke in all the time with little panting 


89 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


cries of “Oh, Pam! . . . my darling! . . . what a 
shame! . . . how awful for you, poor boy! ... oh 
dear! what can we do?” with fervid little tight clasps 
and embraces, and kisses dropped like flowers over 
his face. 

“And I know ... I feel it in my bones that he’s 
going to be disagreeable about your having drinks 
and coffee and liqueurs. You’ll see.” 

“Well, if he is, what’s it matter, dear? I can 
manage, as long as he’ll get me well.” 

“But why should you be denied every little pleas¬ 
ure?” Then she looked at her husband earnestly. 
“Tell me, darling—do you really altogether believe 
in him and his injections?” 

“Believe in him?” Pam stared. “Certainly I 
do.” 

“Oh well!” she sighed anxiously, “I hope you are 
right; but it seems to me that introducing some 
sort of poisonous berry juice into the human system 
is a fantastic . . .” 

Her husband laughed at her doubts. 

“Old Bruce Kelly’s one of the first medical 
scientists living . . . knows all about human sys¬ 
tems and what they can stand, believe me . . .” 

90 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“I only hope he does, darling.” She sighed again 
and resigned the subject. 

But she was right at any rate in her foreshadow¬ 
ing of resumed restrictions, for the very next morn¬ 
ing the Doctor had a whole fresh list of things his 
patient was not to do and take, including coffee, 
sundowns, liqueurs, and sitting up late; and a new 
regime which included bed at eight after a milk meal 
to be superintended by Nurse Gordon, “so’s not to 
have any spoiling nonsense from doting wives,” he 
privately told Pam, who did not repeat the remark 
to Doria. She was furious enough already at the 
new arrangement, insisting on looking upon it as a 
direct slight to her in her capacity as nurse. She 
told Bruce Kelly so too, looking angry and tearful, 
like a wounded child; but as they were alone to¬ 
gether, he thought it as well to treat her like a 
grown-up woman. 

“Your husband’s condition is worrying me very 
much, Mrs. Heseltine. He has for some time been 
slowly reverting to his state when he first came here, 
and I’m afraid you don’t realise how grave that is.” 

“Oh, yes ... I have realised it for a long while. 
It is you , I think, who . . .” She stopped. 

91 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“What do you wish to say?” 

“That if the injections had been stopped . . .” 

“Yes?” he interrogated with bland and deadly 
quiet. “Continue, please.” 

“—probably we would not now have to be stop¬ 
ping the only things that help him at all—good 
meals, and an occasional glass of stimulant.” 

There was silence in the room, then Bruce Kelly 
took up his hat. 

“As you seem to have quite finished talking balder¬ 
dash, and trying to teach me my business, Mrs. 
Heseltine, I’ll bid you good morning.” 

She wept about it to Pam, said she’d been insulted, 
and if it weren’t for him she would never have that 
old Bear in the house again. 

“All because I fought for you to have your little 
sundowners and drinks, dearest . . . which I know 
do you good. . . . And you shall have them too, as 
long as I’m alive to get them for you.” 

“I really don’t myself think they do me any harm, 
Doria; in fact, when I’ve had a bad go of pain, a 
drink is the only thing that pulls me together . . . 
so if that’s all you’re scrapping about with Kelly, 
it’s easily got over. We’ll circumvent him.” 

92 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


She clapped her hands, her laugh echoed through 
the house like a silver chime. “Yes . . . yes . . . 
we’ll circumvent the Bear!” 

And from thenceforward it became an exciting 
sort of game to get in the daily sundowner, the little 
cup of coffee, the glass of liqueur, at unsuspected 
moments, dodging the Doctor, and completely de¬ 
ceiving the nurse. They got a lot of fun out of it 
—at least, Doria did. Pam might have got more, 
if from day to day the conviction had not been 
growing upon him that fun and he would soon be 
finished with each other for ever. He still rose 
from bed, which he found an unbearable place, and 
daily arrangements went on as before, with Nurse 
Gordon coming and going a little more often than 
usual, but unable to be there entirely because, with 
the fever season in full swing, the hospital was 
packed and short-handed. Dr. Kelly’s hands, too, 
were overfull with malarial cases. It was compar¬ 
atively easy for husband and wife to play their little 
“game” undetected, for Pam found less and less 
pleasure in anything that he took, except the stimu¬ 
lants his wife managed to convey to him; and his 
daily agonies became more and more excruciating. 

93 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


There came a night, however, when Nurse Gordon 
had finished with him and gone, and Doria did not 
come at once. It was her custom to lock the front 
door on the departed nurse, so that they could feel 
themselves secure from intrusion, and then bring the 
“port lights” and “danger signals” and all the other 
materials for an enchanting little orgy on the bed¬ 
spread. But to-night, though Pam heard the lock¬ 
ing of the front door and the slur of his wife’s 
silken draperies in the hall, she did not come imme¬ 
diately, and he was impatient. The rat at his vitals 
ate more hungrily, bit into him more cruelly than 
usual, and he wanted something potent to assuage 
that anguish. Doria’s sloe-gin would do no good 
to-night. He must have brandy. And on the 
thought he dragged himself out of bed, en route for 
the dining-room where he knew brandy to be. It 
did not take long to cross the drawing-room, then 
the hall to where the dining-room stood open and 
lighted up. But when he reached the doorway, the 
sight that presented itself kept him standing, silent 
and motionless. Doria, by the sideboard, holding 
up a tumblerful of sloe-gin (he no longer took it 
from liqueur glasses) to the light, and letting fall 
94 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


slowly into it drop by drop a glorious-coloured 
liquid from a little glass bottle. Each drop as it 
fell between the glass and the light by which she 
carefully measured it gleamed a molten rose-red 
ruby. But the whole performance . . . the liquid 
. . . the colour . . . the little bottle . . . her con¬ 
centration . . . filled Pam with astonishment. 

“What on earth . . . Doria!” 

As if the sound of his voice struck her like light¬ 
ning, her hands fell to her sides, glass and bottle 
went splintering to the floor, and down her gown, 
over the carpet everywhere, splashed and spread 
bright, vivid stains. Strangest of all was her face, 
riven as if by shock into a mask of terror and sur¬ 
prise, the stiff lips drawn back like those of a 
panicky animal. Pam Heseltine did not recognise 
this woman. She was a stranger to him. 

“Doria?” he repeated, in a sort of horror. 

“What do you want?” she mouthed at him. “You 
frightened me . . . you startled me horribly. What 
do you want?” She stared with hostile eyes, as if 
he had no right in his own dining-room. 

“I came for brandy,” he said dryly. “I am feel¬ 
ing infernally ill.” 


95 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


She searched his face at that, with a wizened, 
piercing glance. But already the fearful expression 
of terror was passing, her features had begun to re¬ 
sume their usual soft, beguiling beauty, when sud¬ 
denly her attention returned to the stains on her 
wrap, the litter of broken glass about the carpet, 
and cold fury seemed to rush back to her face and 
out of her eyes towards him like a torrent. 

“What a fool you are!” she cried bitterly, vehe¬ 
mently, as if she could have struck him to earth. 
Bitterness crept into him too, the coldness of ice 
round his heart, the old sardonic smile back to his 
lips. This at least was a Doria he knew well! No 
stranger here! 

“I dare say I am!” he agreed curtly. “That 
doesn’t prevent me from needing brandy, however.” 
He walked past her to the sideboard, took the de¬ 
canter, poured himself out a large amount of liquor 
and drank it neat. When he turned to go back to 
his room, Doria had gone. He saw no more of her 
that night. 


96 


PART III 










97 
















PART III 


The spell was broken. She came kittening and 
cozening to his bedside next morning, dropping a 
tender kiss on him when the nurse had her back 
turned for a moment, full of solicitude for his lan¬ 
guor, and of gentle chiding at the melancholy that 
had returned to his eyes. But the spell was shivered 
into a thousand atoms, as a crystal ball is shivered 
by the blow of a hammer. Those words that had 
burst from her lips during that strange scene the 
night before when she stood in the dining-room, amid 
bright stains and broken glass. . . . 

“What a fool you are!" Those haunting words 
possessed a ring of truth that he could not discern 
in these soft cajoleries of the morning. Something 
unreal, too, rang in her brightness. Shades of 
deeper blue lay under the forget-me-not of her eyes, 
and lines of sleeplessness were scribbled about them, 
99 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


and well he knew she was not one to greet the dawn 
with smiles after a bad night! Yet she smiled and 
said nothing of wakeful hours passed! And there 
was a strange watchfulness in her glance! Even 
while she laughingly excused the previous evening’s 
“access of nerves,” the sharpness of the scrutiny she 
set upon him keyed his own jangled nerves to un¬ 
bearable tension. Consciousness was forced upon 
him of something going on under the smooth surface 
of things; something he did not understand. He 
did not want to understand it either, for it was dis¬ 
quieting, sinister, disintegrating. Fear of under¬ 
standing it came at last to eat him more agonisingly 
than the rat at his vitals. 

Some more desperate change, too, had entered 
into his bodily condition. Dissolution of his 
physical elements appeared to be occurring within 
him. His very viscera seemed composed of fire, and 
the marrow in his bones to have turned to molten 
liquid. Appetite had gone. Nothing remained 
except a burning thirst. But he did not ask for 
stimulant now . . . only water . . . nothing but 
water. 

Bruce Kelly’s concern and puzzlement were such 
100 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


that he spent almost the whole day in the sick-room, 
sitting beside the patient to ensure his remaining in 
bed, inspecting every grain of food and drop of 
liquid that came into the room. The injections for 
the first time were discarded. By six o’clock that 
evening he announced his intention of wiring for a 
consultant from Johannesberg unless the patient’s 
condition had improved by morning. That, from 
Bruce Kelly, was admission of defeat, and his face 
looked terribly old and tired when he made it, stand¬ 
ing by the sick man’s bed, in the presence of Nurse 
Gordon and Doria. 

But Pam only smiled rather wearily, and said he’d 
be all right. He did not know . . . particularly 
did not want to know, what was wrong with his body. 
He only knew that the spirit of joie de vivre so 
recently revived in him had received a mortal blow; 
that a mountain of distrust and disillusion sat upon 
his heart; that dreams were composed of dust, and 
ashes were the ordained fare of fools. 

Nevertheless, when morning came he seemed a 
shade better, and after that, from day to day, an 
improvement, almost infinitesimal, yet enough to 
satisfy Dr. Kelly, was maintained. After that 
101 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


things went on much as usual, only that the patient 
was quieter than he had ever been, uncomplaining, 
gentle with his wife, obedient to his nurse, but with 
the last spark of his old fire dashed out and dead. 
There were no more sloe-gins and sundowners, 
naturally. These had automatically ceased with the 
new and rigid attendance of Nurse Gordon. Impos¬ 
sible under the circumstances to dodge Doctor’s 
orders, even had Pam or his wife been so in¬ 
clined. But indeed Doria, when they were alone to¬ 
gether, had explicitly renounced “the game” for 
awhile. 

“We must give Dr. Kelly the reins now,” she said, 
“and see if you are the better for it. If not . . . well, 
of course, darling, I think he’s wrong, and as soon 
as you feel able to take your little drinks again I 
am quite ready to abet you in what I am sure can¬ 
not be bad for you.” 

It was not long before Pam got to his feet again, 
being one of those who openly averred a preference 
for walking to the gates of death rather than wait¬ 
ing to be wafted there on his back. The old order 
of things resumed itself, with Peril coming to read 
to him in the afternoons while Nurse Gordon took 


102 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


her two hours off, and Doria aired herself in the 
sunshine. The latter, spite of her dissension with 
Dr. Kelly, still continued to make his garden the 
scene of her rest-cure, and one evening on her return, 
looking refreshed and happy, she carried in her hand 
a couple of little dappled primulas, which she openly 
admitted to having stolen from a big bed of them 
just out in all their spring glory. But, as she went 
to fix them in the buttonhole of her husband’s lounge 
coat, Peril gave a startled exclamation: “What is 
that stain on your fingers?” 

The girl leaned forward with an expression of 
anxiety unusual to her serene features, and just for 
a moment Pam Heseltine witnessed in his wife’s eyes 
the expression of animal fright that once before he 
had seen, but so fleeting was it that almost he might 
have believed himself mistaken. Doria was laugh¬ 
ing too, now, with her hands whipped behind her like 
a naughty child. 

“I’m a grub . . . I’ve been poking round your 
garden as well as stealing your flowers. Shameful 
of me not to have washed before I came in here!” 

She fled on that, but when she returned Peril still 
wore a troubled preoccupation, that did not dis- 
103 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


perse, either, on Doria’s casual recital of the pur¬ 
chase of a pomegranate from a coolie fruit vendor, 
and the subsequent devouring of it in the garden 
and making a horrid mess of herself. 

There is not really any need to make a mess of 
yourself when eating a pomegranate, for no fruit is 
more delicately arranged for dainty eating; and 
perhaps Peril was thinking of this when she walked 
home with knitted brows and a bewildered expression 
on her face. The Doctor was out to dinner that 
evening as it happened, so she had time and solitude 
for her uneasy meditations, whatever they were. 
Afterwards Valpy brought in the housekeeping 
books to go through with her, and there were various 
domestic matters to be gone into, for Peril had her 
duties to fulfil as official chatelaine in her uncle’s 
house. Just as Valpy was in the act of departing, 
she remembered something else. 

“Oh . . . and Mrs. Keable was asking me if I 
knew anything to take out stains, Miss Perrul. Her 
lady’s beautiful sea-green tea-gown is all a-mess with 
sloe-gin. I said I’d ask you.” 

“Sloe-gin!” uttered Peril, arrested by the words, 
and some correlation of ideas they aroused. In- 
104 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


stantly she had a vision of Doria Heseltine leaning 
over the little gate of “the garden of peril,” her 
handkerchief extended; her gay excited exclama¬ 
tions: “What a heavenly colour! ... I must have 
some! ... a sloe-gin tea-gown /” Then she remem¬ 
bered the stain she had seen on Doria’s fingers that 
very evening, and realised clearly at last why it had 
startled her. A little tense line like a cut showed 
suddenly between her brows. 

“Did Keable tell you how it happened?” she asked 
slowly. 

“Jest an accident. Mrs. Heseltine spilt a glass 
of the stuff over herself, an’ was in an awful rage 
about it nex’ morning, insisting that Mrs. Keable 
shell get the marks out again. But as I tell her, 
Miss Perrul,” continued Valpy in her soft, blurred 
Cape accent, “she never will. They look to me more 
like some of the stains you an’ the Doctor makes on 
the Labertery towels . . . you know what a business 
of boiling in soda that is. But you can’t boil a 
beautiful Paris wrapper of sea-green silk, can you 
now, as I sez to Mrs. Keable?” Peril did not answer, 
and Valpy, enjoying the office of narrator, con¬ 
tinued : 


105 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“It appears that it’s all over the dining-room car¬ 
pet too. A nice fuss there’ll be when the Mintos get 
back from Muizenberg to their old Lodge!” She 
added with relish: “and a nice bill to pay for dam¬ 
ages.” Peril was not listening to this chatter. The 
little line between her brows had turned into a deep 
groove. 

“Bring me the tea-gown to the Laboratory, 
Valpy,” she said. 


Pam felt a good deal better that morning. In 
fact he had been aware for some days of a sensible 
diminution in his physical misery. Besides, he knew 
from the grey pin-point of acute intelligence in Bruce 
Kelly’s eyes that that vaguish, stoutish, reddish man 
of medicine was more at ease as to the general con¬ 
dition of his patient. Could it be possible, after all, 
Pam Heseltine wondered, that Life with long years 
in her hand waited upon him? And what was the 
worth of long years with only dust of dreams and 
ashes of hope to fill them? 

“What is a violet, with no one to give it to?” as 
Whyte Melville says! Or was he wrong in thinking 
106 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


thus bitterly? Had sickness turned him into a 
jaundiced misanthrope full of foul and ungrounded 
suspicions? Had suffering poisoned his brain and 
distorted his mental vision into seeing guilt where 
only innocence was ? On that morning of sweet 
autumn sunshine and mellow airs, these were the 
questions he asked himself. For at heart he was a 
just man. Belief in evil gave him no pleasure . . . 
and to believe evil of one whom he had loved! . . . 
That was torment he longed only to assuage. And 
suppose, after all, he had been unjust, mistaken, 
mad in his imaginings? At any rate, it seemed to 
him, after Nurse Gordon had settled him on the 
sofa and gone off on some urgent duty at the Hos¬ 
pital, that the garden would be a better place than 
this darkened room in which to think out and per¬ 
haps banish for ever from his mind the hateful 
suspicion that haunted it. 

The house was very quiet, except for a splash and 
gurgle of water in the bathroom where Doria 
occupied herself, and from the kitchen regions a far- 
off murmur of servants’ voices. He met no one as 
on somewhat shaky legs he made his way out through 
the drawing-room and stoep, down the steps into 
107 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


the mild green and gold of the garden. But the 
sense of exhilaration with which he had started soon 
passed. Physical effort, after days of prostration, 
left him exhausted. He looked round for a place to 
rest, but no seat offered except a lop-sided Madeira 
chair too decrepit to bear his weight. Nothing to 
do but return slowly to the house. He reached it on 
its left side, and spied on the stoep there an old 
Dutch settle of substantial oak, on which he 
stretched himself at length, hands under head, and 
body at ease on the laced leather thongs composing 
the seat. Only then did he realise that he was right 
under the window of Doria’s bedroom. But that 
did not matter. They were not likely to discom¬ 
mode one another, for she was in the bathroom, and 
the ceremonies of the bath took at least an hour. 
But even while he was thinking this, with a faint 
smile on his lips, he heard the rustle of her move¬ 
ments in the room above him, the little humming 
sound she often made with her lips when her hands 
were engaged doing one thing and her mind clearly 
occupied with another. They were very slight 
sounds, but somehow they made it impossible for him 
to concentrate his mind on those problems he had 
108 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


wanted to solve. Besides, he had grown suddenly 
very tired ... so tired that he presently fell asleep. 

That which roused him was a voice, tranquil yet 
with a grave note in it; a voice he knew well, speak¬ 
ing in Doria’s room: 

“J must ask you to give them to me, please, Mrs. 
Heseltine . . . those berries you plucked in the 
Doctor's drug garden .” 

Then Doria, a haughty edge of astonishment in 
her tone: 

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking 
about, Miss Kelly!” 

But Peril, firm and steady: 

“You see . . . Valpy saw you take the key of the 
drug garden from its nail inside the surgery window. 
Being curious, she went up to her bedroom and 
watched you go in and gather the berries. You must 
give them to me, please.” 

Doria uttered a hard, contemptuous laugh. 

“What horrid spying people! Watching from 
windows . . . inventing fantastic nonsense and lies! 
Really, Miss Kelly, I’m surprised at you . . . listen¬ 
ing to servants’ gossip!” 

“No: not gossip. I called Valpy into the Labora- 
109 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


tory and questioned her, after I had discovered a 
reason myself for thinking . . .” 

“All I can say,” broke in Doria impatiently, “is 
that you bore me with this idiotic story. It really 
doesn’t interest me in the least to hear what your 
impertinent servant says, and I know nothing what¬ 
ever about berries.” 

“You do know of berries, Mrs. Heseltine. Those 
that I once warned you of, in the drug garden . . . 
that they were a slow, deadly poison. You said their 
colour fascinated you . . . reminded you of sloe- 
gin.” Her voice suddenly became urgent, “Do give 
them up to me, please. There were just five left on 
the bush yesterday . . . before you went to rest in 
the garden . . . and now there is not one. You 
must give them to me.” 

“You are mad.” 

“Will you give them up if I promise to tell no 
one, to speak to no one about it?” 

“I wish you would be good enough to go away,” 
drawled Doria, coldly insolent. “You are boring me 
to the verge of tears.” But there was no movement 
of departure. 

“Then I must tell Uncle Bruce.” 


110 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“Tell him,” cried Doria, suddenly violent. “Con¬ 
sidering that he has been filling my husband with 
that very poison , and against my wish, I fancy he 
would have some difficulty in proving that I . . 
she pulled herself up sharply. “Anyway, the whole 
thing is too silly and fantastic. No one would be¬ 
lieve you.” 

“Oh yes, they would,” Peril persisted quietly. 
“And there would be other things to tell. The stain 
on your fingers when you came back yesterday . . . 
after you had been plucking them. You said it was 
a pomegranate bought from a coolie . . . but pome¬ 
granates are not ripe enough for eating till the end 
of next month. Then . . . the silk gown on which 
you spilled the sloe-gin, mixed with some other red 
stuff. I have that gown. Keable brought it up to 
Valpy for advice.” 

“How dare she!” Doria’s exclamation rang sharp 
and furious. “And how dare you come here . . .” 
her words died away, as though something she saw 
in Peril’s eyes frightened her. Indeed, the girl’s 
voice was cold and relentless now, like that of a 
judge arraigning a criminal at the bar. 

“You see, I happen to know about drugs and 
111 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


stains, and I recognise the curious magenta juice 
of that poison berry on your gown. You must have 
gathered them before . . . when you went to rest 
in the garden! And for some reason that I do not 
know you made them into a liquid and mixed them 
with sloe-gin. That mixture was spilled ... I 
cannot tell under what circumstances. . . . So, yes¬ 
terday, you went for more berries, and took the last 
of them. What your purpose has been in all this 
I am not able to guess. I can only say that you 
will have to explain it to my uncle, unless you give 
me those berries now, at once.” 

There was a heavy silence, a silence that seemed to 
fill the room, pass out of the open window, slowly 
tumbling like a stone upon the heart of the man 
lying there. No more denials now from Doria. No 
protestations of anger or boredom. Just silence, 
broken only by the sound of someone breathing hard, 
long, deep breaths, indrawn with a slight sighing. 
Then the movement of a chair, dragging feet across 
the floor; a cupboard door opened and shut again 
with a sharp click, again the dragging feet. At last 
Doria’s voice, flat, toneless, muttering incoherent 
phrases: 


112 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“This little bottle ... I made them into liquid 
... I told you the colour fascinated me ... I 
wanted to experiment with . . . dye silk for a gown 
. . . only a woman would understand, of course. 
No doctor would . . . men are such fools. . . . But 
you promised—didn’t you?—if I gave it up. Not a 
word to anyone? . . . That’s all right, then. You 
see ... he wouldn’t understand how silly I am 
. . . about colour . . .” 

She was still murmuring disjointed phrases when 
Peril went. Pam, lying like one already dead on the 
old Dutch bench, heard a door close, and the girl’s 
light feet pass through the house and down the 
garden. It seemed to him that that was the last 
kind and friendly sound he would ever hear in this 
world. Inside the bedroom Doria had begun to 
laugh. Trill after trill of silver chimes, jangled 
and out of tune, echoed through the house. 

When Nurse left at three that afternoon for her 
“off-duty” spell, she naturally supposed that Peril, 
according to custom, would be with the patient in a 
few minutes. Heseltine did not think it necessary to 
inform her that he had sent a boy to The Hill with 


112 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


a message to Peril not to come clown until half-past 
five. The fact was that he had things to do in 
which he required neither help nor company; and 
when Nurse had gone he locked himself into his room 
and set about doing them. 

He did not really anticipate interruption, for 
Doria, the only person with any right to obtrude 
upon her husband’s privacy, had not, since the 
morning’s fit of hysteria, emerged from her bedroom. 
For some little time Keable, with flurried look, rushed 
back and forth, carrying alternate lumps of ice 
and jugs of hot water, while potent odours of volatile 
and Cologne waters filled the house. But at length 
it was evident that emotion had exhausted itself. 

A period of hush ensued. The victim of “nerves” 
rested. Fresh air, however, and an entire change of 
scene, being essential to complete recovery in such 
case, Mrs. Heseltine, with the savoir vivre that dis¬ 
tinguished her and doubtless kept her young and 
fresh while others grew weary of living, proceeded 
later to arrange for this supplementary cure, by 
having a cavalier rung up and invited to come after 
tea and take her for a long drive. It was just as 
Pam had finished writing the last of two difficult 
114 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


letters that he heard a Rolls-Royce racer belonging 
to the Hon. Jon purring like a tame tiger outside the 
front gate. 

After the pleasant flurry of departure was over 
and the house all quiet again, he crawled to the box- 
room to hunt through old trunks and portmanteaux 
for something he had brought from home but had 
never expected to need. Finding it at last, he hid it 
in the drawer of his dressing-table, then lay down 
on the sofa to rest, for the exertions and emotions 
of the day had tired him out. 

It was there that Peril found him when she came. 
She had brought with her a volume of Adam Lindsay 
Gordon’s poems . . . now a special favourite of his, 
and he surprised her by asking at once for “Doubt¬ 
ful Dreams,” a strange, sad thing full of the anguish 
of a man’s wasted days, and bitterness for bright 
hopes turned to ashes. Her glance, tinctured with 
distress, flickered mournfully upon him from time to 
time as she read, but he seemed very composed, lying 
there listening, with closed lids. And when she had 
finished he spoke calmly, as though he had rather 
been occupied with interesting thoughts than taking 
in the poignant regrets of the poet. 

115 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“Peril, I want you to promise to do something for 
me . . . in case I don’t last much longer.” 

She put out her strong little hand and laid it on 
his. “Of course, I will do anything. But you 
mustn’t talk like that, you know.” 

He smiled at her. “I only said ‘in case’ . . . and 
after all it’s on the cards for anyone of us . . . isn’t 
it?” 

“You are getting better every day.” 

“Yes, I know . . . but accidents happen in the 
best regulated families. ... You ought to humour 
a sick man anyhow.” 

“Not in being morbid . . . but of course you can 
rely on me to do anything. . . . Tell me.” 

“There’s a man I’m fond of and want to help . . . 
and supposing I were not here in the flesh 
. . . it’s you who must do it for me ... do you 
understand ?” 

“But what . . . how could I?” 

“If you saw him in what you believed to be danger 
. . . not to his body perhaps, but his soul, his 
future . . . then you must put out a hand and stay 
him. Could you do that for me?” 

She nodded, with troubled eyes. 

116 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“Even if it meant betraying a secret? No. I can 
see you are going to say no to that, so I won’t press 
the point. Only remember this: it nearly always lies 
in some woman’s loved and trusted hands to make or 
wreck a man’s life. We Heseltines, for instance, 
are like that. We give everything into the keeping 
of the one woman . . . our souls, our future, our 
hopes of heaven. So ... if he delivered himself 
up into the hands of the wrong woman . . . well, 
you can see where old Punch would be.” 

“Punch!” At that the peace and grace of Peril’s 
face was invaded; from the low forehead, like a bar 
of ivory beneath the darkness of her hair, to the 
base of her throat, colour flushed and flooded her. 
“It is your cousin you are speaking of ?” she 
murmured. 

“Yes . . . old Punch.” Pam, staring hard at 
the wild-rose beauty, awakened by the sound of his 
cousin’s name, understood slowly, and then was 
swiftly thankful. A great many things had become 
intelligible to him during the hours of this long day. 
It was as if for his benefit a Hand had turned on the 
awful searchlight of the Day of Judgment, reveal¬ 
ing to him dreadful acts and the motives that had 
117 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


urged them. By that white, strong light he saw 
again the look in Doria’s eyes and heard the sharp 
edge of her voice when Punch announced his depar¬ 
ture. Only too well now he knew the meaning of 
both. It was not very difficult to realise how much 
more desirable such a man as Punch would seem, 
compared to himself, in the roles of lover, husband, 
and Peer of England. The sequent happenings, 
then—ruthless, remorseless, crueller than the grave 
in their subtle and hideous contriving—were all quite 
logical. The whole plan of action and every move 
in it were clear as the noonday sun. But Punch he 
exonerated from any share in it. The Heseltines 
fought clean and struck in the open. No poisoners 
and assassins in that race! And now, when he saw 
that this girl with her white soul, the promise of 
mountain-tops and untrodden lands in her eyes, 
loved his cousin, he was glad with a great glad¬ 
ness. 

“Yes, old Punch,” he repeated softly. “If ever 
he’s in danger, Peril, remember he’s worth saving. 
There are big things in him. But often, the bigger 
a man is, the more completely is he wax in the hands 
he loves and trusts. . . . And supposing they are 
118 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


the wrong hands! That is what you’ve got to watch 
out for. That is where I am going to depend upon 
you. . . . Reach out if you see him in danger. Save 
him. Remember you have promised that! And one 
more thing ... I want you to take this letter, and 
deliver it into his own hand when next you see him.” 

“But,” she objected quickly, “you will see him 
first. He is sure to come straight here when he re¬ 
turns on the tenth of next month” 

“Ah . . . coming on the tenth, is he? You’ve 
heard from him then?” Again she flushed. 

“He wrote because he is bringing me a bush-baby. 
You remember, when my little Evvie was killed . . . 
he was so kind about it, and he found me another up 
at Kafue ... on about the tenth he said he would 
be here.” 

“That settles it, then. He’s sure to come to you 
first. A man’s not going to lug a bush-baby round 
while he calls to see his sick relations. So take the 
letter, and be sure to give it him if you see him first. 
And now, I wish you’d read me ‘How we Beat the 
Favourite,’ will you, before you go? Then I think 
I’ll try and sleep a little before Doria gets in.” 

So, when she had finished that breathless narrative 
119 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


which some sportsmen think the finest racing poem 
ever written, Peril shook his hand and left him, for 
he seemed tired and desirous of being alone. Yet 
when she had gone he did not sleep. Instead, he 
took the book of poems and, opening it again at 
“Doubtful Dreams,” he set to work to copy one 
of the verses on to a half-sheet of notepaper. His 
hand shook and scrawled, but the task was accom¬ 
plished at last. Then, very quietly, he went to the 
dining-room, filled a little liqueur glass with sloe-gin, 
and carried it carefully to his wife’s room. Placing 
it on the dressing-table, just where anyone coming 
to the mirror would instantly see it, he laid the 
scrawled sheet of notepaper on top of it. Then he 
went away to his own room. 

Doria, returning from a forty-mile-an-hour rush 
through the air, to say nothing of the exercise of 
bouncing over boulders and skidding against tree 
stumps, might reasonably have been expected to feel 
invigorated, if not refreshened. Instead, her soul 
was filled with detestation of her companion and an 
abomination of despair. The Hon. Jon, though a 
daring fool, and at his best with his hand on the 
120 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


steering-wheel of a racer, remained a fool, and his 
callow adoration bored her horribly. Even while 
she listened to him she was aware of an ache that 
ate like fire for the sound of Punch Heseltine’s voice 
and the sight of his eyes. She had borne that ache 
with patience while hope stayed with her. But now! 
. . . trembling just below the polite surface of 
things lay the memory of the morning’s bitter hap¬ 
pening . . . the fear and mortification she had 
tasted . . . the future’s uncertainty and disap¬ 
pointment! Her castle of hope, fashioned subtly 
with her hands and the bright instruments of death, 
lay in the dust. Broken, ruined, smashed ... by 
a girl! She could not brook it. . . . Oh, God! 
she could not brook it. Fury and murder were in 
her heart at the thought. But fear was there too. 
She feared that girl. Ah! that was bitter. 

How, then, should she feel refreshed by her drive, 
or predisposed to courtesies at the end of it? The 
Hon. Jon, much to his chagrin, found himself cal¬ 
lously dismissed at the gate. Not even asked in for 
a sundowner! A pity she had not assimilated the 
country’s custom of hospitality, he thought 
furiously as he drove away. But all she longed for 
121 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


was the privacy of her own room, where she could 
throw off the gauze shroudings that sometimes came 
near to suffocating her, breathe freely, and plunge 
once more into plot and counter-plot. That she 
would have to go slowly now she knew well, walk 
warily, mingle the wisdom of the serpent with the 
innocence of the dove as never before, wait long, 
weary months, perhaps, for the fulfilment of the 
passion that devastated her. But she would not be 
defeated . . . would not relinquish her plan. . . . 

And above all she must cherish her beauty more 
than ever, for by that chief weapon she would still 
beat, beguile, and burrow her way to triumph as 
Marchioness of Kenchester and wife of a man who 
set her veins aflame as no man in the world had 
done. 

Her first act, then, on entering her room and 
throwing off her veils was to approach the mirror, 
to examine her face, and compute how much havoc 
the day’s experiences had wrought upon it. In¬ 
stantly, of course, her eyes fell upon the little glass 
standing there, with the paper laid on it. What was 
this? Sloe-gin . . . and a verse of poetry in Pam's 
writing! Her face blanched with terror and guilty 
122 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


apprehension as she looked first at the one, then 
slowly read the other: 

“For nothing on earth is sadder 

Than the dream that cheated the grasp. 

The flower that turned to the adder. 

The fruit that changed to the asp; 

When the day-spring in darkness closes. 

As the sunset fades from the hills. 

With the fragrance of perished roses. 

With the music of parched-up rills.” 

While she still stood there with the paper in her 
hand a revolver shot rang through the quiet house. 


There are pink brides and blue brides; lavender, 
primrose, and eau de nil brides: but it is difficult to 
introduce any dashing variety into the trappings of 
widowhood, and yet retain the sympathy of your 
friends. 

Doria Heseltine, however, had always been un¬ 
usual in coping with the conventional, and clever 
enough withal to make her way of doing things 
excusable, if not exactly acceptable to the crowd. 
Her decision, therefore, to become a white widow was 
not as severely criticised as it might have been with 
123 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

some women, if they had been foolish enough to try 
it on. 

“You see,” she gently explained, “one can mourn 
just as deeply for one’s beloved clad in a cool white 
garment, as laden with heavy blackness.” She added 
pathetically: “Pam always loved me in white, and I 
feel it is a kind of tribute to him, somehow, to look 
as nice as I can.” 

She certainly succeeded. Her “weeds” were of a 
snowiness that was dazzling, and to say that she 
looked seraphic in them is to express the facts very 
mildly. The combination of a Florentine head of 
daffodil yellow, blue eyes haunted by grief, and the 
pearliness of a ravishing skin framed sorrowfully 
in the finest crepe de Chine , composed a vision that 
few men could have witnessed without being stirred 
by uneasy longings “for the mystical better things,” 
as the poet hath it. That at least is what the Hon. 
Jon thought, after catching sight of her walking in 
her garden at even. For of course she received no 
men visitors; received no one, indeed, except a few 
kindly women, almost as overwhelmed as herself by 
the dreadful tragedy of a suicide happening in their 
midst. Shyly they came, offering their sympathy 
124 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 

to the beautiful dame du haute monde , and were 
touched and impressed by the dignity and simplicity 
of her grief. She seemed to them more like a tragic 
bride than the widow of tragedy. And when they 
left her they thought of her still, picturing her, beau¬ 
tiful and desolate, wrapt in her sorrow. For she 
continued to stay at Minto Lodge, inaccessible to 
all but the chosen few, hidden in her shaded and 
silent abode as the pearl of great price is hidden in 
the jeweller’s case . . . until that propitious day 
when someone with the price on him shall come 
along! 

People at first wondered rather why she should 
linger in Umtete, marvelling, too, at her “nerve” in 
continuing to inhabit that house of fateful incident. 
But it was given to few to compute the quality of 
Doria Heseltine’s nerve. 

One man at least knew its inflexibility and her 
strength of will to fashion circumstance to her 
desire. But that man tarried in his coming. Up 
beyond the Zambesi work detained him, that even 
the calamity of his cousin’s death, did not induce him 
to curtail. Fortunately his presence was not 
officially necessary, and the inquest had gone for- 
125 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


ward without him. The last letter written by the 
dead man, and addressed to his doctor, had made 
everything dramatically simple. In it he set forth 
his gratitude for all that Bruce Kelly had done, and 
his complete confidence in ultimate recovery under 
the latter’s skilful treatment, but that very fact, he 
went on to say, had forced him to the use of his 
revolver. For he did not want to recover. Sorrow 
for the loss of his brother and a complete and uncon¬ 
querable boredom with life had decided him on mak¬ 
ing an end of things. He was only sorry for the grief 
this would cause his wife and relatives, and for that 
he begged their forgiveness. He also apologised to 
the doctor and the coroner, and made the one last 
request that his body should be left alone and “not 
carved up in any post-mortem business,” as that 
was “more than he could stand the thought of.” 

Nothing to be done by any coroner, on such evi¬ 
dence, but bring in a verdict of temporary insanity: 
with which everyone agreed. How could a sane man 
be “unconquerably” bored with an existence that 
held a lovely and devoted wife and an impending in¬ 
come of £50,000 a year? 

Bruce Kelly’s strange desire to ignore the dead 
126 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


man’s last request, and hold a post-mortem just the 
same, was looked upon as both morbid and heartless, 
and against public opinion backed the coroner’s de¬ 
cision that no good purpose could be served by such 
a course, while unnecessary pain might thereby be 
inflicted upon the widow. Poor little widow! Every¬ 
one felt for her hard luck. Losing husband, a title, 
and the prospect of great wealth ... all at the 
crack of a pistol! At the same time no one dared 
even to hint sympathy for the loss of material 
things, to one so dazed by grief. 

“I am like a child lost in a dark wood,” was all 
she could pitifully say to those who came forward, 
nervous but generous in their offers of practical 
assistance and advice. “But Major Heseltine, my 
husband’s cousin and best friend, will know what is 
best for me to do. I will just wait here quietly 
until he comes.” 

So events stood still, waiting upon the return of 
Punch. Arrangements for the transportation of 
Pam Heseltine’s mortal body (now resting tempor¬ 
arily in the local cemetery) to the vaults of his 
ancestors at Scawnshane were suspended, and it 
seemed natural enough, meantime, that the stricken 
127 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


lady at Minto Lodge should make no plans for leav¬ 
ing Africa without the kindly direction of her kins¬ 
man’s hand. At any rate she waited. 

And in a garden a girl too waited, hoping and fear¬ 
ing ; wondering if God would be good to her and let 
the process of saving Punch Heseltine from destruc¬ 
tion come naturally, or whether she must fight for it, 
even as Pam in the hour of his death had implored 
her. If the latter course, then she knew she would 
have to do it single-handed and against great odds. 
There must be no dragging of the Doctor into it, 
nor raking of the dead man from his rest . . . even 
though with his own lips he had commanded her to 
leave nothing unsaid. But he himself had gone down 
to the grave, loyal to disloyalty, faithful to betrayal, 
and it was not for Peril to unseal his secrets. Yet 
she must save Punch from Doria: that was what it 
all reduced itself to. Pit her girlhood, her simplicity 
and inexperience, against the guile, the charm, the 
dazzle of a siren! How was it possible that she 
could prevail? She knew not . . . only that she 
must . And God was on her side. She knew that 
too, for He had brought Punch to her here, that 
night when she lay weeping in an abandonment of 
128 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


grief—weeping for two things, for her little bush- 
baby’s death, yes; but above all for the fact that 
she had seen Pam Heseltine’s wife upon the breast 
of his cousin, their lips almost touching; and in the 
horror of it had realised that she loved that man 
and could not bear him to betray his honour. And 
he had come there and found her weeping! And 
something in his gentleness and simplicity had re¬ 
vealed to her that he was without guilt in the matter. 
The woman had tempted, but he had resisted; indeed, 
she had the evidence of her own eyes on many a day, 
as they rode past, as to that state of things. 

Yes, God was on her side, the God of her faith, 
and of all clean, loyal men; and she prayed to Him 
every night in her garden to give her the victory; 
and even while she prayed she listened for the jingle 
of spurs on the road, and a man’s step on the path. 
And at last they came! 

On the night that Punch Heseltine returned to his 
camp, and put forth again within the hour, he cared 
not who heard the ring of his horse’s hoofs upon 
the Umtete Road, nor who knew that they stopped 
at the gate of a garden on a hill; for this was no 
clandestine rendezvous he fared forth upon. There 


129 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


were things to be done on the morrow, he knew, dis¬ 
agreeable things, sad obligations, family duties. But 
to-night was his . . . his and Love’s. Knowledge 
had come to him, in the silences of the veld, that 
the very core of existence hid for him in this en¬ 
chanted garden, though he could not be truly certain 
that the girl he hoped to find waiting there was 
truly his and for him , until he held her against 
his heart, in the place where first he had found 
her. 

It was just such another night as that—dim 
and purple with the sparkle of a thousand stars over¬ 
head. Full of that profound silence which composes 
a myriad voices of nature: love-calls of tree crea¬ 
tures and dwellers in the grass, whispering of leaves, 
rustle of flowers. In lone veld places he had dreamed 
of this sweet spot, realising that here dwelt heart’s 
desire. All that woman can hold and give to man 
was here for him: the riches of the earth in the little 
circle of a girl’s arms. 

He knew when he found her at last, under the 
trees, and held his lips to hers, that all he dreamed 
of was true. . . . That rare and wonderful gift of 
the gods had come into his possession: purity and 
130 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


passion in equal measure . . . and he drank deep 
from the fresh cup of her lips, a draught to fire his 
blood, yet cleanse his soul. 

“A pool of lilies! ... I will wash away all my 
madness in you, my darling.” 

No more roaming and fevered quest for Punch 
Heseltine! This lovely warm vase of life contained 
all he had sought the world over. Voyage and har¬ 
bour were here; Europe and the wilderness; wine and 
spring water. 

“I loved you from the moment I saw you sitting 
there in the gloom ... so kind and gentle with 
poor old Pam, and his pack of cards!” 

“I loved you before that . . . when you rode 
alone below my garden . . . with a moody look 

55 

“That was because I could not find you ... I 
knew you were somewhere waiting for me . . . but 
I could not find you.” 

“Oh, Punch! I was so afraid you w r ould get lost 
on the way.” He did not tell her how nearly that 
had come to pass, for, like Pam, he was one of 
those who did not “tell.” But his kisses told her 
all she wanted to know both of past and future. 
131 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


Their happiness was such as to be almost too keen 
to be borne. They were only simple mortals after 
all, composed of very human elements. Moments 
flew into hours, and all too swiftly the wind of coming 
separation blew chill between them, shaking his 
heart, and making the lilies of the pool shiver and 
tremble. 

“Let us get married quickly, my heart! . . . then 
no more parting!” 

“Yes . . . quickly,” she sighed under his lips 
. . . “then together for ever.” 

Just at the last she remembered to give him Pam’s 
letter which she always carried with her; and he in 
turn remembered tasks, both tiresome and tragic, 
that awaited him. For a moment the shadow of 
Doria fell across their joy, but instantly passed, for 
all power and allure had long since gone out of that 
memory for him, replaced by this great and pure 
passion of his life. As for Peril, she knew that God 
had verily and indeed been on her side. 

Later, in the quiet of his camp, he read and 
pondered Pam’s letter. Much of its inner meaning 
remained hidden for years, and some of it for ever, 
as the writer had intended. But here and there a 


132 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


sentence carried a sharp edge, or sounded a strange¬ 
ly warning ring. 

“It is your duty to marry, and soon, if Scawn- 
shane is not to pass for ever from the Heseltines. 
. . . Marry a girl who will love you (not herself), 
who will give you sons, and something to care for, 
more satisfying than that pride of life and ‘lust of 
the eye’ of which both you and I have been overhot 
in the pursuit. Above all, bring fresh blood and 
clean blood into the old stock. But, if for any 
reason all this is not in your plan . . . pause a bit, 
Punch, and do not be too proud to take counsel. 
The bearer of this letter has it in her hands to guide 
you.” 

So that was Pam’s counsel in the hour of death? 
Thinking, even with finger on trigger, of his race 
. . . of the moral and physical emendation of the 
stock from which he sprang! Nothing very insane 
about such meditations, thought Punch, but then he 
very well knew that his cousin had not been insane. 
Though what had constituted the breaking-point, 
what had driven him at the last to end his long 
weariness, remained a mystery. Only, in that final 
hour Pam had trusted and believed in him! That was 
133 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


a grace for which Punch Heseltine was to remain 
grateful his whole life . . . with a thankfulness to 
God that such trust had never been betrayed. 

He went to Minto Lodge next day: but not before 
talking to Bruce Kelly, and making wonderful plans 
for an immediate wedding and departure for Eng¬ 
land ; and not before he had drunken again of dew 
and honey in the garden of heart’s desire. It was 
with Peril’s kisses warm on his lips that he stood 
before Doria. 

Her reception of him was colder than the eternal 
snows. For of course she knew of his arrival the 
night before, and it infuriated her that he had not 
come straight to her. But though she meant for a 
while to keep that pose, to punish him, there was 
guile in it too. She withdrew herself to icy distances, 
but her ice was for melting at the breath of pas¬ 
sion. She was distant only to make nearness more 
certain, wayward only to be won; and so certain 
of him that she believed she could play the ice-maiden 
for her own amusement before she showed him the 
glint of the fires that consumed her. 

Strangely enough, to his now cleared vision, there 
134 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


was something about her, with her blue eyes and 
snowy draperies, that made him think of Natura 
Maligna , that beautiful spirit of the ice whom simple 
mountaineers believe in, one who haunts the cold blue 
caverns of the glacier, flickers alluringly above the 
treacherous pass, and launches the avalanche for the 
destruction of men. And while he so thought, she 
in turn, subtly sensing something unfavourable to 
herself, was considering: 

“Strange men, the Heseltines! ... it may be 
that he feels the shadow of Pam between us . . . the 
coldness of a dead hand! ... I must go softly, 
delicately, not to outrage that fantastic loyalty of 
his. . . .” 

Meanwhile they discussed those things which had 
necessarily to be discussed—everyday matters, such 
as the lease of Minto Lodge, one or two other obli¬ 
gations Pam had entered into since coming to 
Rhodesia, and which she desired Punch to look into. 
Important affairs, such as those connected with his 
income, the dead man had left in perfect order, and 
her position was simplified by the fact that they had 
some years before made “mutual” wills in each other’s 
favour. Possession of his few hundreds a year would 
135 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


then come to her automatically on her return to 
England, where the will remained. The mode of her 
return, too, was touched upon, and the arrangements 
for transporting poor Pam to Scawnshane gone into. 
Nor did she shirk reference to the manner of her 
husband’s death. She hated the subject, indeed, and 
even her callous soul shrank from the lies she felt it 
necessary to tell. But an urgency to appear pitiful 
and blameless in the eyes of Punch was upon her, for 
now that the way lay open before them, she suddenly 
feared that he might remember against her those 
unspoken invitations to treachery, the calls of her 
eyes and hands and lips which he had resisted, and 
in resisting which he had won her. So, excusing 
herself, she traduced the dead. 

“He never cared for me ... I have known it for 
years, though no one has ever heard it from my lips 
until to-day. You don’t know what my life has been, 
Punch . . . the faithlessness I have had to endure— 
and ignore . . . for the sake of the family name!” 
(that ought to have its appeal, she thought). “You 
don’t know what my longing has been for a real love. 
Someone who could offer me all that I, too, have to 
give. . . 


136 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


He sat there rocklike, looking at her with strange 
eyes. Could it possibly be that he was untouched by 
this story of her wretchedness? She must try a dif¬ 
ferent line. 

“But I realise now that he was not entirely re¬ 
sponsible. . . . Poor Pam! And I can only be 
thankful that in my unhappiness I was not driven 
too far. . . . That when the one great love came 
into my life . . . there was nothing and is nothing 
he could have reproached us” (hastily she corrected 
herself)— “me, for.” 

Still that stone-like stare in the Heseltine eyes 
. . . and, w as that a flicker in them, such as she had 
often surprised in the eyes of her husband—a flicker 
of irony? Not possible . . . never, never! She 
went desperately on. 

“At the last I think he realised ... all that I 
had suffered. For he left a strange letter to me 
. . . asking my forgiveness (God knows, poor boy, 
he has it!) and seeming to wish for my future hap¬ 
piness.” (A daring inspiration came to her: What 
of a tender phrase in that letter, legacying her to 
Punch?) “He even suggested,” she faltered, “the 
form my happiness might take.” 

137 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


“You did not produce that letter at the inquest, 
to refute the theory that he was insane?” 

Doria looked profoundly shocked: as, indeed, she 
was by the grimness of his voice. 

“It was a sacredly private letter . . . written 
almost in the hour of his death. I destroyed it.” 

“Ah! . . . He wrote me a letter, too, in the hour 
of his death. . . .” She shot up from her chair, 
and Punch stopped, arrested by the panic of her 
eyes, the draining of blood from cheek and lip so 
that the paint flared out in bold relief; then he said 
slowly: “I did not destroy it.” 

“But . . . how did you get . . .?” Her hand 
pressed hard against the laces of her bosom, her 
breath came short. “Who could have . . . ?” With 
an effort she regained her composure, and declared 
firmly: “It must be a forgery.” 

“Why should it be a forgery? Why, if at the 
hour of his death, Pam thought of me too, of my 
happiness . . . gave me wise counsel. Why should 
that be a forgery, Doria?” 

“I ... I don’t know,” she murmured faintly, 
and sank down again, her eyes wavering before the 
keenness of his. “Only that I did not know about it 
138 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


. . . cannot think when he wrote. May I see it, 
Punch?” 

“No. It is sacredly private . . . as yours was .” 
She blenched again, leaning back, putting a hand¬ 
kerchief to her lips to cover their trembling. What 
did he know? What had Pam written? Oh! . . . 
something had gone desperately askew with this 
meeting that should have ended in triumphant won¬ 
der! Why did fear creep like a snake round her 
heart? What was this terrible conviction growing 
in her that Punch knew? What was the meaning of 
that cold probing glance of his ? She could not bear 
it. Something in the strong quiet of his eyes shook 
her. The spectre of doubt that assailed her grew 
and grew, until it seemed to fill all the room, and she 
could stand the suspense no longer. 

“Punch!” she cried, and by a supreme effort threw 
into her voice all the spells of which she was mis¬ 
tress. But he sat unmoved, holding her with that 
dispassionate gaze, drying on her lips the wild words 
that sprang to them. Hypnotised, she began, in¬ 
stead, to murmur incoherent things about leaving 
the country, reiterating her plans; but in the mid¬ 
dle of a sentence the passion that had brought her 
139 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


to the slaying of a man’s soul and body unleashed 
itself again: 

“Punch! . . . you must come home, too. You 
can’t stay on out here, whilst I . . 

“I am going home.” The quiet, the evenness of 
his tone chilled her. “The ‘old man’ has cabled, 
asking me to come to Scawnshane. Says he wants 
to see me there before he dies.” 

“Oh! ... I am so glad.” Hope quivered in her 
again; joy lifted up its head. “Punch! ... if we 
could take the same boat! ... go by the East 
Coast!”—the sensuous languor of her soul flowed 
from her lips in a voice like liquid silver—“stay 
awhile in Egypt . . .?” 

“I’m afraid that is out of the question, Doria.” 
He chose his words courteously, but with delibera¬ 
tion, for there must be no further ambiguity. “I 
have already arranged to sail . . . with my wife 
. . . from the Cape.” 

It seemed to her afterwards, when she was alone, 
that years had passed, a nightmare of darkness, im¬ 
measurable distances through which she had heard 
his voice, calm, cousinly , giving grave details of his 
140 


THE GARDEN OF PERIL 


approaching marriage with Peril Kelly . . . that 
girl! 

At last she arose, and from sheer force of habit, 
faltered across the room to a mirror on the wall. A 
conviction filled her that in the last hour her face 
had changed: and she was right. The face that 
stared back at her showed like a crumbled ruin behind 
its veil of paint; base passion and ignoble defeat had 
stamped it indelibly; never again might it stir the 
hearts of men, nor repudiate its forty-eight years of 
existence. 


THE END 


RIFFLING RUBY 


BY 

J. S. FLETCHER 

James Cranage, out of a job and 
short of cash, earns a sovereign by 
carrying a message to an obscure shop 
in Portsmouth. Here he begins a series 
of adventures which involve among 
others a mysterious Chinaman, who 
commits murder artistically and freely, 
an eccentric noblewoman, with gems 
and horses for her hobbies, “Rippling 
Ruby,” the beautiful little mare that 
is being groomed for the Derby, and— 
most important of all from Cranage’s 
point of view—Peggie Manson, trainer. 

“Rippling Ruby” is Fletcher at his 
best. 


G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 

NEW YORK 


LONDON 




Lew Tyler’s Wives 

By 

Wallace Irwin 

“ Lew Tyler’s Wives ” is American to the core. 
Part of the story takes place in San Francisco, 
part in New York ; all of it will win a way into 
the hearts of its readers. 

From one of them, who read an advance copy 
of the book, comes this word : 

“ I don’t know when I have been so moved by 
a story, felt so intimate with its people, so con¬ 
cerned about them. I might have been a family 
friend. 

“ If the quality of creative work lies in its 
power to build people out of inspiration and ink, 
and then blow the breath of life into them, so 
that they live in the heart of the reader and run 
the chromatic scale of his emotions—if this be 
novel writing, then you have made the most of 
it, it seems to me. 

“ Do I gush ? If I do, it is because, sick of so 
much * realism * and literary aphrodisiacs, 1 be¬ 
come an incorrigible enthusiast over something 
that strikes a human response, and wholesome.” 


G. P. Putnam’s Sons 

New York London 







Helen of London 

By 

Sidney Gowing 

This is a novel of English society 
life, having as its central characters a 
man of keen, but perverted intellect, 
and a worn n whose very beauty was 
a curse —Helen of London. It is a 
story of a woman’s brave fight for 
respectability and love. Mr. Gowing 
is an adept in the construction of 
convincing romances, and this latest 
work is certain to appeal to all lovers 
of a good story well told. 


G. P. Putnam’s Sons 


New York 


London 






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